29.853, Support: Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: PhD, University of Birmingham

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-853. Thu Feb 22 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.853, Support: Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: PhD, University of Birmingham

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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 15:22:06
From: Alice Corr [a.corr at bham.ac.uk]
Subject: Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: PhD, University of Birmingham, UK

 Institution/Organization: University of Birmingham 
Department:  

Level: PhD 

Duties: Research
 
Specialty Areas: Applied Linguistics; Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; General Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics 
 
Required Language(s): Portuguese (por)

Description:

Forest Edge Doctoral Scholarships Programme (Leverhulme Trust and University
of Birmingham): interdisciplinary literature/linguistics/digital humanities
project.

Within the cultural logic of the capitalist world system, the idea of economic
development usually comes at the expense of forest preservation. Located at
the peripheries of this economic system, the forests found within the the
transnational space of the Portuguese-speaking world, in countries such as
Brazil, Angola and Mozambique, have been historically targeted in this
developmental process whose importance to capitalism is reified by social
pacts which are deeply rooted in the collective cultural unconscious of these
societies.

Departing from the intrinsic role of language and culture in formation,
maintenance and change of social values, this project will study the tree-like
linguistic structures within which ideas of ‘forest’ appear in cultural
artefacts of the Portuguese-speaking world in search for distinctive patterns
and their correlations with deforestation and preservation. Through the
compilation and contrastive analysis of data regarding the position of the
many nouns denoting the space of the forest in works of prose-fiction at
selected parts of this transnational area at key points in the industrial
development of these societies, eventual patterns found will increase our
comprehension of the role of fiction in the process of destruction and
preservation of forests.

The project will combine comparative critical methods with insight from the
field of linguistics in order to develop an innovative, interdisciplinary
methodology according to the specialism of the successful candidate, which
will additionally draw from the experience of the supervisory team and
contributions from the project’s external and international partners. Close
textual analysis, informed by structural linguistics, discourse analysis and
ecolinguistics, will be contextualised within colonial and postcolonial
histories and critical approaches, including world-systems theory. Hypotheses
formulated on the basis of the textual analysis will then be tested through
distant reading (Moretti 2013), employing methods from the digital humanities.

Funding Notes:
Full payment of tuition fees at Research Councils UK fee level (£4,270 in
2018/19), to be paid by the University; 
An annual maintenance grant at current UK Research Councils rates (2018/19 is
£14,764), to be paid in monthly installments to the Leverhulme Trust Doctoral
Scholar by the University. 

All studentships come with a minimum of £3,000 Research Training Support
Grant. This can be increased, if there are justified project costs, up to a
maximum of £12,000. 

Funding is available for UK or EU students only. The tenure of the award can
be for up to 3.5 years (42 months).
 

Application Deadline: 16-Mar-2018 

Web Address for Applications: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgr/bifor-phds.aspx 

Contact Information: 
	Dr Alice Corr 
	a.corr at bham.ac.uk  


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