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Amanda Potts

Dr Amanda Potts

(she/her)

Senior Lecturer

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
PottsA@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 74912
Campuses
John Percival Building, Room 3.60, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am a Senior Lecturer in Public and Professional Discourse. My specialism is in corpus-based critical discourse analysis of texts and topics in public and professional communication, most recently: media discourse, medical communication, and language of the law. In my work, I usually take a mixed methodological approach, exploring some combination of the topics below:

  • semantics
  • metaphor analysis
  • analysis of culture
  • sociolinguistics
  • representations of identity
  • gender/sexuality
  • investigation of discriminatory discourses
  • discourse communities in social media

As Principal Investigator, I have successfully obtained over £525,000 in funding from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the UK Government.

In 2017, I became a founding co-editor of the Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, published by Cardiff University Press. JCaDS is a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal publishing corpus-assisted research into discourse, defined as language in use as a vehicle of communication. JCaDS is pluridisciplinary: we welcome studies from all areas of the humanities and social sciences that incorporate corpus techniques in investigating how spoken and written language is used and how meanings are created and explored.

I am a member of the Centre for Language and Communication Research, the Cardiff Corpus Network, and CaLL: Cardiff Language and Law.

Publication

2024

2023

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2009

Articles

Book sections

Conferences

Monographs

Other

Websites

Teaching

I currently teach on three undergraduate modules:

  • Reading and Writing in the Digital Age (Year 1)
  • Discourse (Year 2)
  • Language and Popular Culture (Year 3)

And one postgraduate module:

  • Corpus Linguistics (MA)

In previous years, I have taught Introduction to Media Communication, Media Discourse, Forensic Linguistics, Forensic Linguistics 2, Research Foundations, and Lifespan Communication at Cardiff University, in addition to various undergraduate modules (Corpus-based English Language Studies; Discourse Analysis; Introduction to English Language; Language and Style) and postgraduate modules (Research Methods; Corpus Linguistics) at Lancaster University.

Biography

Education and qualifications

  • Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practices, Lancaster University, UK
  • Ph.D. Linguistics, Lancaster University, UK
  • Master of Applied Linguistics (with merit), Sydney University, Australia
  • Bachelor of Arts: Humanistic Studies in Literature (summa cum laude), Adelphi University, USA

Professional memberships

  • Member, ESRC Peer Review College
  • Fellow, Higher Education Academy
  • Member, British Association for Applied Linguistics
  • Member, International Gender and Language Association
  • Member, Law and Society Association

Committees and reviewing

Cardiff University committees

  • Education Committee: School of English, Communication and Philosophy
  • Research Committee: School of English, Communication and Philosophy

External committees

  • Board of Studies (as external examiner): Nottingham Trent University
  • Founding co-editor: Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

  • Corpus-based (critical) discourse analysis
  • (Social) media discourse
  • Language of law
  • Discourse and identity
  • Language, gender, and sexuality

Current supervision

Kate Kavanagh

Kate Kavanagh

Research student

Phanupong Thumnong

Phanupong Thumnong

Research student

Past projects

  • I previously supervised Kate Barber's PhD, entitled "(Re)framing rape: A sociocognitive discourse analysis of sexual violence at the intersection of white and male supremacy", awarded in 2022.

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Culture, representation and identity
  • Law and society and socio-legal research
  • Communication and media studies
  • Corpus linguistics
  • Gender studies

External profiles