<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">PhD
candidate wanted </span></b><i><span lang="EN-US">Multilingual
Conversation at </span>Warru<span lang="EN-US">wi Community, northern Australia</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">A PhD candidate is sought to study the multilingual
use of Aboriginal languages in conversational interaction in north-west Arnhem
Land, Australia. Warruwi is a highly multilingual community where Mawng, Kunwinjku,
Ndjebbana, English and varieties of Yolngu-matha are spoken on a daily basis. It
is common for adults to marry outside of their own language group. Most adults
actively control the languages of their parents, and have varying degrees of competence
in several other languages (perhaps their grandparents’, spouses’ and peers’).
Children typically acquire two Indigenous languages in the home, adding English
to the mix when they commence school.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The aim of this project is to study how
speakers use multiple languages within informal conversation at Warruwi
Community. This project will document unprompted interactions in families in
which spouses claim affiliation to different languages. Of particular interest
are families with spouses affiliated to both western and eastern Arnhem Land languages.
The successful candidate will build a corpus of annotated face-to-face
conversations recorded on high-definition video. The study will use analytic
methods of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. The candidate
will have considerable scope for their dissertation topic but some possible
research questions might include</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Symbol">·<span style="font-size:7pt;font-family:'Times New Roman'">
</span></span><span lang="EN-US">In what contexts do speakers
consistently use a single language in a single interaction and in what contexts
do they code-switch frequently?</span></p><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><p><span>Do children code-switch more
frequently than adults?</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><p><span>To what extent do those who
speak only Yolngu-matha varieties as their first languages use north-west
Arnhem land languages in conversation, and vice versa?</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><p>
<span>Apart from the linguistic code,
in what other ways do speakers design their talk for benefit of their
recipients?</span></p><p><span>In multilingual conversation,
how does gaze, pointing, gesture, conventionalized sign, object manipulation, etc.
interact with the spoken languages in the construction of interactional moves?</span></p></blockquote></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The candidate will be supervised by Dr Ruth
Singer, Dr Joe Blythe and a third supervisor attached to the University of
Melbourne’s Research Unit for Indigenous Languages. Ruth will be able to
provide support in getting started doing fieldwork at Warruwi Community and
additional fieldwork funds through her DECRA.</span></p>
<br><br>Contact Ruth Singer <a href="mailto:rsinger@unimelb.edu.au" target="_blank">rsinger@unimelb.edu.au</a> or Joe Blythe <a href="mailto:joe.blythe@unimelb.edu.au" target="_blank">joe.blythe@unimelb.edu.au</a> for more information <div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br></div></div>
</div>
</div><br></div>