BA (Newcastle), MA (York), PhD (Southern California), FHEA
I started my life in linguistics at Newcastle University as a student of English Language and subsequently did an MA in Language at the University of York. After completing my PhD in linguistics at USC in Los Angeles in 1987, I moved south to Mexico, where I lived and worked for 20 years. During my time at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), I developed with Peter Ecke an influential model of second and third language vocabulary learning (the Parasitic Model). I also taught in the MA in Applied Linguistics and served as Head of the Department of Languages and Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies for the School of Humanities.
In 2007 I joined the subject area of Languages and Linguistics at York St John University, where I conduct research on Global Englishes, teach at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and supervise postgraduate researchers. I’m especially interested in social and cognitive perspectives on English as an international language and the broader issue of how language and languages are conceptualised by general and applied linguists, teachers, and laypeople. I’ve (co-)authored and (co-)edited several books, including Ontologies of English (CUP, 2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 BAAL Book Prize. With Rachel Wicaksono, my co-editor on that volume, I also co-created the open-access Changing Englishes online course for teachers at www.changingenglishes.online.
I teach on our undergraduate and postgraduate TESOL courses.
Before joining York St John University, I conducted empirical research on the development of the L2 and L3 mental lexicon, with Peter Ecke (University of Arizona). This led to the development of the Parasitic Model of vocabulary learning, which continues to be influential in studies of cross-linguistic influence in Second Language Acquisition.
At York St John University I have shifted my attention to the broader social and cognitive status of non-native Englishes, approaching the issues from the perspectives of Usage-Based Linguistics and Global Englishes. Aside from several theoretical and conceptual papers, I’ve worked over the past few years on a couple of corpus-based analyses and a series of more qualitative studies. Most recently I have worked with colleagues in Germany and China on a project concerned with how to trigger reconceptualisations of English in trainee English teachers. This project was supported by the Applying Linguistics fund of the British Association for Applied Linguistics.
