Modern English Language and Linguistics
Glasgow colleagues are active in individual research in every area of Modern English Language studies, from phonetics and psycholinguistics through grammar and discourse studies to lexicology and semantics. We also have access to numerous large electronic datasets available for exploitation in research, and have generated many of our own, including the SPADE project (Speech Across Dialects of English); the Metaphor Map of English; the Scots Syntax Atlas; and the Seeing Speech project.
A further focus is laboratory research, specifically for phonetics and psycholinguistics. The Glasgow University Laboratory of Phonetics (GULP) operates a well-equipped experimental laboratory, with equipment for high-quality acoustic recording, articulatory analysis, along with systems for eye-tracking and other behavioural experimental methods.
In addition to academic research projects, we excel at applications of our work. The Speak For Yersel project is a public-facing exploration of varieties of Scots and attitudes towards those varieties across Scotland. Variability in Child Speech is a collaborative effort with colleagues in Speech and Language Therapy to understand developmental trajectories in children’s acquisition of language; and the recently-awarded project Discriminating Dialects: Mitigating bias in Automatic Speech Recognition does exactly what its name suggests.