Welcome to Lise Fontaine's Personal Page


 

Position:

Lecturer

School/Unit:

Centre for Language and Communication / ENCAP

Address:

Humanities Building

Email:

FontaineL@cf.ac.uk

Telephone:

029 2087 6324


[Postgraduate studies and research] [Teaching] [Research Interests] [my blog] [select publications]

Postgraduate studies and research

I am very keen to work with postgraduate students in the following areas:

  • Systemic Functional Linguistics

  • The noun phrase/nominal group

  • Referring expressions (see below)

  • Electronic language production (see KeyStroke Project)

  • Computer-mediated communication

  • Corpus Linguistics

If you are interested in coming to Cardiff to explore one (or more) of these topics, please contact me to discuss the opportunities offered at Cardiff University in terms of MA studies, PhD research or collaboration.

Teaching

My teaching and research interests (see below) are in the fields of Linguistics and Computer-mediated Communication. Whenever possible, I like to merge these interests.

Currently I teach the following modules:

  • Words and Meaning

  • Describing Language

  • Computer-mediated Communication

Linguistics

Describing Language is a second-year module and in this module we pick up on the grammar/syntax section of the first-year course and develop this area further. I take a Systemic Functional Linguistics approach to Language. This means that I'm not only interested in the structure of language, I'm also interested in how it is functioning (how people are using it, for what meaning). Words and meaning focusses on lexical semantics, collocations, and word origins and formation.

If you are interested in learning more about Systemic Functional Linguistics; you can follow the links below. I won't reproduce a list of useful links here since Mick O'Donnell's site has just about everything you might want to know and I'll add a link here to some of the work that's been done here at Cardiff University.

Mick O'Donnell's SFL site

Some writings on the Cardiff Grammar (and more links)

CMC

I've been an avid and eager online citizen since 1996 but my first introduction to computers was way back in the early 1980s. I actually started out in Engineering and Computer Science when I left high school, but when I discovered Linguistics, all that changed and I've never looked back. Linguistics is my passion. Still, I am very interested in new technologies and Human-Computer Interaction. No computer background is necessary for this module and students have the opportunity to learn things in the computer lab where we do things like build web pages and create powerpoint presentations. We do a lot of hands-on Internet exploring, learning about searching online and stuff like that. I see much of CMC as a special kind of multi-modal discourse. So one of the things we look at is how we can use some of the existing work on Multimodality, including

  • Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold,

  • Halliday's Context of Situation (for example, (1978) Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning, London: Edward Arnold) as it is the foundation for both of these main works on Multimodality

We also consider CMC in its social context which, for me, includes studying access and accessibility, the screen as a visual space and its effect on reading, the notion of Time, and Legal Issues and CMC crimes.

If you are interested in CMC, or if you want to learn more, follow these links to related resources:

the Journal of Computer-mediated Communication

CMC Magazine

Wired Magazine

As We May Think by Vannevar Bush published in 1945 - well worth a read!

Daniel Chandler's semiotics page

MLA Style Electronic Format - Dr. Mary Ellen Guffey

HyperText @ media-studies.ca

Alan Liu's Technology Of Writing (@ Voice of the Shuttle)

 

Research

Recently I have become interested in cognitive processes and their relationship to language choice. I'm pursuing this in two areas: keystroke logging of spontaneous online chat and NLP (neuro-linguistics processing).

My main research focus has been on referring expressions, which includes personal reference. These expressions are typically realized as nominal groups in the lexicogrammar and so my research focusses on the unit of the nominal group. I take a multi-disciplinary approach to the problem of how Speakers refer to 'objects'. For me, this includes related fields of linguistics study such as: corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, lexis, lexicogrammar, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. Since the study of referring expressions is vast and complex, my chosen area is post-modification in the nominal group, or complex referring expressions.

Information about my PhD Dissertation is available here

REX: a database of tagged Referring EXpressions

This database is still largely underconstruction, but follow the link for more information.

Fontaine, L. (2006) REX, a database of Referring EXpressions tagged with both functional and syntactic labels. CD-ROM. Centre for Language and Communication Research, ENCAP, Cardiff University.

Other areas of interest:
personal reference, functional grammar, the role of choice in language production, keyboarded language (as opposed to spoken or written), computer-mediated communication, systemic functional linguistics.

The Keystroke Project

The keystroke project is a study of the human production of electronic language using a keyboard (e.g. email, chat, Facebook, and other types of spontaneous, personal computer-mediated communication). In this study, the analysis would be based on the use of keystroke software (Inputlog) which records all keystrokes made by the speaker.

The main research topics in the project include:

  • the influence of "typed" language on linguistic choice

  • automatic (‘online’ or ‘as it happens’) language processing

  • typographical errors

  • production errors

  • evidence of formulaic sequences

  • effects of ‘online language processing’ (synchronous real time exchanges, e.g. chat) and ‘reflective language processing’ (asynchronous exchanges, e.g. email, discussion forums)

  • other relevant topics arising from the data.

Student Research Topics might include:

  • documenting ‘teen-talk’. Since the internet is one of the primary communication modes for most teenagers/adolescents, the use of keystroke logging software seems particularly relevant. So just what are teenagers doing while they type?

  • describing electronic language production: What evidence is there of self-correction or repair work in spontaneous chat? What kinds of ‘errors’ do speakers make?

  • exploring multi-word expressions and collocations in spontaneous language

 

Publications

(2009) with Yves Kodratoff and  Jérôme Azé, ''CorTag: a contextual tagging of words within their sentences" in Information Retrieval in Biomedicine : Natural Language Processing for Knowledge Integration Violaine Prince and Mathieu Roche (eds.) London: IGI Publishing. pp.177-189.

(2007) "The Variability of Referring Expressions : an alternative perspective on the noun phrase in English"  in LACUS Forum XXXIII – Variation.,Douglas Coleman, William Sullivan, and Arle Lommel (eds.) pp. 159-170.

(2006) “Where do "we" fit in? Linguistic Inclusion and Exclusion in a Virtual Community” In Beyond Misunderstanding, the linguistic reconstruction of intercultural communication. Kristin Bührig and Jan D. ten Thije (eds.) pp. 319-356, Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 90-272-5387-0.

(2005) “Une analyse pragmatique des pronoms personnels : Etude d'un discours sur la propagande raciste dans une communauté virtuelle” in Linguistic Aspects of the Text of Propaganda Banks, David (Ed) Harmattan: Paris. ISBN 2-296-00007-X.

(2005) with M. Franova, and Y. Kodratoff “Une analyse récursive constructive pour la recherche du sens du texte de Spécialité” in Revue des Nouvelles Technologies de l'Information RNTI, special issue on Text Mining. Toulouse, France. ISBN 2-85428-702-9.

(2005) “Napoléon dans ses lettres à Joséphine: quand il la traite de Vous” in Linguistic Signs of the Author's Presence, Banks, David (Ed) Paris: Harmattan. ISBN 2-7475-9083-6.

(2004) "Textual Challenges in Recursive Texts" In Text and Texture: Systemic Functional viewpoints on the nature and structure of text, Banks, David (ed) pp. 301-328, Paris : Harmattan. ISBN 2-7475-5812-6.

(2003) “Diasporic Residue in Québec : the use of personal pronouns in online personal reviews of the film, 15 février 1839”  In Souffles, Migrations et diasporas, Les Cahiers du CICLaS,  n° 2  pp. 179-197.  ISSN 1637-7060 Paris, France.

(2002) with Yves Kodratoff "Comparaison du rôle de la progression thématique et de la texture conceptuelle chez des scientifiques anglophones et francophones s'exprimant en Anglais" In Asp, La revue du GERAS, 37-38, 2002, pp. 59 - 83, 1246-8185 Bordeaux, France.

 

Conference Presentations

click here for a list of my conference presentations

 

back to my staff page












VariousThings
... ...

LinC Blog

research network for
Linguistics in Cardiff

LinC SummerSchool and Workshop
September 14-16 2010


The European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference and Workshop 2009
Get Firefox
cardiff university logo
 
Bravenet Counter Stats
Powered by Bravenet
View Statistics