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Gerard O'Grady

Professor Gerard O'Grady

Professor

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
OGradyGN@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 74903
Campuses
John Percival Building, Room 3.59, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
Comment
Media commentator
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am a member of the Centre for Language and Communication Research.

Publication

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2014

2013

2011

2010

2009

2007

2005

2004

2003

Articles

Book sections

Books

Monographs

Research

Research interests

My chief research interests are:

  • exploring the communicative functions of intonation: notably how intonation is used in conjunction with syntactic cues to help segment the speech signal into semantic units analogous to the orthographic units of clause, sentence and paragraph, and how tonality and tonicity choices project information as given or new;
  • examining the concept of dynamism in language as it unfolds both synchronically and diachronically;
  • describing how affect and emotion are realised linguistically; and
  • developing a model of language as a stratified bio-social semiotic.

I am currently working with colleagues at KU Leuven on the interplay between intonation and syntax in the projection of information structure in clefts and writing a co-authored monograph called "The Language Dynamic".

Funding obtained

Full funding £6133 has been obtained from the journal Language Learning to host a multi-institution Round Table "New Theoretical Perspectives above below and across the clause" on September 4 and 5 2014 at Cardiff University. The papers were published in English Text Construction.

With Professor Kristin Davidse I received 400000 Euros for the project: Putting specificational there-clefts on the map: a data-based investigation of their grammar, semantics, prosody and pragmatics from the FWO.

Teaching

I currently teach or teach on the postgraduate module Phonetics and Phonology, 2 undergraduate phonetics/phonology modules Sound in Action and Sounds of Speech and the year 2 foundational grammar module Sound Structure and Meaning.

Biography

I come from an SFL tradition and work mostly with spoken data in order to examine how the interplay of lexico-grammatical features and prosody signals textual and interpersonal meaning.

With Tom Bartlett (Cardiff) and Rebekah Wegener (Aachen) I edit the book series Key topics in SFL

https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/key-concepts-in-systemic-functional-linguistics/

I am on the editorial board of the journal Functions of Language

https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/fol/main

Supervisions

  • Systemic Phonology
  • Spoken Information Structure
  • Communicative Dynamism
  • Intonation
  • Textual and Interpersonal Grammars
  • Critical investigations of media texts (spoken and written)
  • The semiotics of sound
  • The realisation of emotion/affect linguisitically