The conference will be held at Northumbria University’s City Campus, Newcastle upon Tyne and offers a hybrid mode of participation for both in-person and online attendees.

Our Vision and Commitment

At the heart of the 15th NNPCiLL conference lies our unwavering commitment to fostering a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment. Our aim is to continue the legacy of providing an engaging platform where emerging scholars can present their research, gain invaluable feedback, and network with peers and established academics in the field.

Embracing Diversity and Inclusivity

Using a hybrid format, we are pleased to welcome both in-person and online participation. This inclusive approach promotes an array of presentations and discussions, enhancing the richness and reach of the conference.

More than a Conference

The 15th NNPCiLL is more than just a conference; it’s a nurturing hub for the next generation of linguists. Participants will not only share their research but also develop their presentation skills, engage in thought-provoking discussions, and expand their professional networks. It’s a unique opportunity to be immersed in a world of innovative ideas and breakthroughs in language and linguistics.

Plenary speakers

We are excited to present our plenary speakers for the conference:

• Professor Rob Drummond – Professor of Sociolinguistics, Manchester Metropolitan University

Abstract: Manchester Voices: community-engaged sociolinguistics

Manchester Voices was a large-scale sociolinguistics project that took place between May 2019 and January 2023. Its aim was to take a community-engaged approach to explore the accents, dialects and identities of people living across the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester.

In this talk I will discuss the benefits, practicalities and challenges of taking this kind of approach to sociolinguistics research, and outline some of the innovative methods we employed. I will then explore some of the data and findings, from the surprisingly distinct accent differences between the boroughs, to the patterns of accent and dialect perception across the region, to the personal insights people shared from their own experiences in relation to the way they speak and what it means to them. Finally, I will describe some of the outputs from the research, highlighting the importance of reaching different audiences. 

Throughout the talk I will include the bits that went well, but also the bits that went less well, with the aim of encouraging us all to learn from the hugely enjoyable, but also difficult, imperfect and messy experience of doing language research.

• Dr Cong Zhang – Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology, Newcastle University

Abstract: The Melodious Speech: Tone, Intonation, and Beyond

Speech prosody, often regarded as the melodious aspect of language, plays a vital role in communication across different languages. In this talk, I will demonstrate what speech prosody is and how it is produced and perceived during our daily interactions. Different languages utilise speech prosody in different ways. In tonal languages, where melodies convey lexical meanings through lexical tones, the addition of sentence-level prosody, intonation, further complicates the linguistic dynamics. I will illustrate how these elements intertwine to shape the melodic quality of speech by delving into the interaction between tones and intonation. Furthermore, I will explore the roles of prosodic cues in the early detection of clinical conditions such as aphasia at an early stage. By synthesising findings from diverse research endeavours, this presentation aims to further our understanding of speech prosody and its relevance in linguistic analysis and clinical practice.

Call for Papers

We invite postgraduate students (including MA, MSc, MPhil, and PhD) from all areas of linguistic research—both theoretical and applied—to contribute to the 15th NNPCiLL conference. We welcome abstracts for oral and poster presentations. The extended deadline for abstract submission is 29th February 2024.

Submission Guidelines

Submission of Abstract

Click here to submit your abstract

Each author may submit up to two abstracts. However, only one submission may be as a sole or first author. This policy ensures a broad representation of contributors.

If you have any problem accessing the abstract submission link, please contact: nnpcill15@northumbria.ac.uk

Review Process

All submissions will undergo an anonymous peer-review process for a fair and rigorous evaluation.

Conference Programme

Date: 11^th April, 2024

Venue: Lipman Building, Northumbria University

AGENDA AT A GLANCE

Time	Activity	Location
9:00-9:30	Registration and refreshments	Lipman Foyer (Registration) Lipman Hub (Refreshments)
9:30-9:45	Welcome Talk (Nancy Dieu-Ngoc Nguyen)	Lipman 031
9:45-10:45	Morning Plenary (Speaker: Dr Cong Zhang Chair: Prof Billy Clark)	Lipman 031
10:45-11:00	Coffee Break	Lipman Hub (with refreshments)
11:00-11:40	Parallel Presentation Sessions	Lipman 031, 033 034 and 035
11:40-11:50	Short break
11:50-12:30	Parallel Presentation Sessions	Lipman 031, 033 034 and 035
12:30-13:30	Lunch	Lipman Hub
13:30-14:30	Poster Presentations	Lipman Hub (in-person presentations) Blackboard Ultra (online presentations)
14:30-15:30	Afternoon Plenary (Speaker: Prof Rob Drummond Chair: Prof Karen Corrigan)	Lipman 031
15:30-15:45	Coffee Break	Lipman Hub (with refreshments)
15:45-16:45	Parallel Presentation Sessions	Lipman 031, 033 034 and 035
16:45-17:00	Closing Talk (Joe Dean)	Lipman 031
17:30	Conference Dinner	Wagamama

Please visit the Conference Programme for further information.

If you would like to participate in the conference, Please follow this link to visit Northumbria University’s Online Store for the conference registration.

Once you have completed the registration, please email the receipt reference to nnpcill15@northumbria.ac.uk and we will forward you the password information. Many thanks.

On the day:

The conference will start from 9am (with registration) and finish at 5:00pm on the 11th of April.

For in-person participants, the conference venue is in the Lipman Building, on the city campus of Northumbria University. Breakfast, lunch and refreshments will be served throughout the day.

Please use this guide for accessing Eduroam or the ‘Guest’ WiFi network at Northumbria University:

From 5:30pm onwards, we will host the conference dinner at Wagamama in the city centre. Meals are payable at the restaurant.

Parallel Sessions

Oral Presentations	In-person (Lipman 033)	In-person (Lipman 035)	Online (Lipman 034)	Online (Lipman 031)
Morning session
	Chair: Prof Michelle Sheehan	Chair: Dr Alex Leung	Chair: Nancy Dieu-Ngoc Nguyen	Chair: Jasmina Pasic
11:00-11:20	Argument Ellipsis and Thai Binding Richard Wilson	Language alternation to scaffold learning in EMI classrooms Sameya Priom	Discerning Patterns: An Exploration of the application of a Corpus Tool to Investigate the Political Speech of Women Leaders in the context of Northern Ireland Mairead McCann	Communicating the affective dimension of classical Chinese poetry Mengyang Qiu
11:20-11:40	Univerbation as Morphological Repair John Hutchinson	Assessing Thai Engineering Students’ Perspectives on EMI Challenges and Coping Strategies: A Q Methodology Study Vararin Charoenpornsook	A Diachronic Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis on The Independent’s Representation of ‘Anxiety’ Hui Chen	Unveiling Narrativity Dissembled in Mahapatra’s “Summer” and “Dawn at Puri”: A Barthesian Analysis Bhamidipati Sai Vaishnavi Maitali Khanna
10 minutes break
	Chair: Dr Nick Riches	Chair: Dr Niamh Kelly	Chair: Joe Dean	Chair: Hind Alsaleh
11:50-12:10	Silence in Court – What is NOT said. Claire Jones	Exploring a Chinese model of creativity in EFL classrooms Zhewei Zha	Phonetic variation in Australian English: a Comparative study of Queensland and New South Wales speakers Erwanne Mas	Collaborative Learning and Writing Development: Investigating the Impact of Peer Feedback through the Think-Pair-Share Technique on ESL Students’ Writing Skills. Sachini Galagoda
12:10-12:30	Metaphors and their repercussions: investigating the metaphors used to conceptualise school subject English in a series of Ofsted publications Caroline Godfrey	MALL in a challenging EFL context: Can it really enhance L2 vocabulary learning? Amjed  Al-Rickaby		Empowering English Learners through Digital Storytelling for Enhanced Speaking Duong Thuy Le Anh Kim Thi Lam Linh Thuy Hoang Minh Hien Vo Ngoc Hong Thi Nguyen Nhu Le Thi Hoang
Afternoon session
	Chair: Prof Dan Duncan	Chair: Dr Robert McKenzie	Chair: Houssem Sid	Chair: Joe Dean
15:45-16:05	The Puzzle of Western Austronesian Voice Alternations: New Evidence from Belait Holly Drayton	Living the Policy: Ethnic Minority Students and Their Teachers in an Ethnic High School in Southwestern China Yiao Dai	Behind the Scenes: Exploring the Wellbeing of Public Service Interpreters   Yulin Diao	Explore Chinese Learners’ Motivation Towards Languages Other than English in the Post-pandemic Era Through L2 Motivational Self System: A Test of the L2 Motivational Self System Ruoxuan Li
16:05-16:25	What pronunciation features should Japanese speakers focus on for better English intelligibility? An empirical study of intelligibility in L1-L2 and L2-L2 interactions Naosuke Amano	Minoritised Languages and India’s New Education Policy: A Policy and Attitudinal Analysis of Awadhi   Jack Greeney	The Effect of Distributivity and Word Order on Agreement Attraction Errors in Urdu Asma	Multilingualism in Riyadh: An Analytical Study of the Linguistic Landscape Bodur Alshathry
16:25-16:45		Changing Themes in Depression Representation: A corpus-based study of British newspaper coverage Lingyi  Zeng		Development of Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks for Majority and Minority Language in Croatia: Methodological Similarities and Differences Anja Slovenc

Poster Presentations

In-Person Presentations

13:30-14:30, Lipman Hub

Chair: Prof Billy Clark

The Analytical Approaches Used in my PhD Research: Investigation of Gender Construction in Algerian communicative classrooms of English: A De-colonial Feminist Perspective Khaoula Belghit

An investigation into the effects of applying the activities of Communicative Language Teaching Approach on English learners’ speaking skills in Libya. Nedal Karaim

Working With Words Em Richardson

Interface Conditions on Variable Positioning of Adverbs: the case of reduplicated adverb fronting in Mandarin Xinyu Zhu

Online Poster Presentations

13:30-14:30; Blackboard Ultra Breakout Rooms

Chair: Dr Mimi Huang

Breakout Room One: Stigmatisation of Serbian Dialects: To Change or Not to Change the Way You Speak? Lea Aničić

Breakout Room Two: Exploring Occupational Competence-based Reforms in Dental English Education for Chinese EFL Learners: Insights from GXMUCS’s Practices Xiawei Chen and Yixin Peng

Breakout Room Three: A Preliminary Study of NP Ellipsis in Ecuadorian Quechua Adæmrys Chihjen Cheng

Breakout Room Four: Conceptual Metaphor of Trauma in Holocaust Testimonies; a Corpus-based Study Daban Q. Jaff

Breakout Room Five: The ‘start-from-scratch’ Meaning and Selectional Restrictions of Mandarin Repetition Adverb ‘chóngxīn’ Changxin Ke

Breakout Room Six Language, Gender and Gendered Discourses in the Community of Practice of Professional Chefs. Natalia Lara

Breakout Room Seven: Family Language Policy of Finnish Immigrants in the Context of Brexit: Focus on Heritage Language Maintenance Meiqi Li

Breakout Room Eight : The Exploitation Of Linguistic Capital In Language Learning: A Study On English Majors And Chinese Majors At Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 Hoa Do Thu, Huong Luu Thi and Dao Do Thi Bich

Breakout Room Nine: Linguistic Landscape on WeChat Moments: Translanguaging Practices and Identity Construction of Chinese Postgraduate Students in the UK Shuang Xu

Breakout Room Ten: A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the Conceptual Metaphors in the Tibetan Proverbs in King Gesar Zhiyao Ren

Presentation Guidelines

ORAL PRESENTATIONS:

Oral presentations will be 15 minutes each, followed by a 5-minute Q&A session.

If you are attending in person, please bring your presentation with you on a memory stick.

If you are presenting online, we will send you a Microsoft Teams link to join at your allocated time. To ensure the smooth running of your presentation online, we recommend that you email us a copy of your presentation by Tuesday, 9th April 2024.

pOSTER PRESENTATIONS:

Posters (in-person or online) will be displayed for approximately 60 minutes.

If you are attending in person, please print out your poster in A1 (594 x 841 mm / 23.4 x 33.1 inches) in landscape orientation. We will provide poster boards to display your poster.

If you are attending online, please design your poster in a 16:9 (widescreen) ratio and email us your poster presentation by Tuesday, 9th April 2024. We will upload your poster to the virtual poster presentation room on Blackboard Ultra in advance. We will send you a link to join the virtual presentation room on Blackboard Ultra. Online poster presenters are recommended to join the link 30 minutes before the start of the poster presentation session to familiarise themselves with the settings and functions of the presentation room on Blackboard Ultra.

Important Dates

• Extended Abstract Submission Deadline: 29th February 2024
• Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 13th March 2024 (Updated Date)
• Notification of Bursary Application Outcomes: 13th March 2024 (Updated Date)
• Deadline for conference registration and fee payment: 2nd April 2024

Registration

Please complete this Registration Form to confirm your attendance at the Conference.

The deadline for registration and conference fee payment is Tuesday, 2nd April, 2024.

Registration Fees

• In-person participation: £20 per person
• Online participation: £12 per person

Methods of payment

To secure your participation in the conference, please pay the registration fee by Tuesday, 2nd April 2024.

Card payment online (preferred)

Please follow this link to make payment via Northumbria University’s Online Store

BACS payment (bank transfer)

Please see below bank details for you to pay your fee by BACS.

Please quote ‘ADSS_15TH NNPCILL’ as the reference. Once you have made the payment, please E-mail your proof of payment to nnpcill15@northumbria.ac.uk so that we can locate your payment.

Bank: Barclays Bank Plc

Branch: 49-51 Northumberland Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7AF

Account Name: University of Northumbria at Newcastle

Sort Code: 20 – 59 – 42

Account Number: 00909297

IBAN Code: GB63 BARC 2059 4200 909297

SWIFT Code: BARCGB22 

BIC Code:  8030

VAT Number: GB686-9948-42

Travel

You can get to Newcastle easily by train, and the Northumbria University campus is right in the city centre.  The conference will be held in the Lipman Building , which is in walking distance of the train station (around 20 minutes), or you can get the Metro to Haymarket station, which is right next to the campus.  There are also lots of taxis at the station.

For further information on finding us and maps of the city and campus, see the Northumbria University travel page.

Accommodation

If you need to book accommodation for your stay, any central hotel should be suitable as the city centre is not large and getting around it is very easy. Search engines such as Newcastlegateshead.com, Trivago, Booking.com and  Hotels.com may be helpful.

Bursaries

Sponsored by the Postgraduate Student Committee of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGBPSC), we are delighted to offer a number of bursaries for our upcoming conference. These bursaries are designed to cover the registration fees for both in-person and online attendees. Additionally, for bursary recipients requiring travel within the UK, we can provide an extra £30 per person towards travel or accommodation expenses, in the form of a reimbursement upon presentation of relevant receipts. This initiative reflects our commitment to making the conference accessible to a wider audience by reducing financial barriers that might impede participation in this significant learning and networking opportunity. We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the LAGBPSC for their generous support of our conference.

We have streamlined the conference bursary application process by incorporating relevant options into the abstract submission form. This enables applicants to easily indicate their preferences.

The award of the conference bursary will be based on the quality of the abstract submitted. Notifications of bursary application outcomes will be issued on 13th March 2024.

Conference proceedings

We plan to publish proceedings featuring high-quality papers presented at the conference and encourage all presenters to submit their work for consideration. Further details regarding submission guidelines and deadlines will be provided in due course.

Conference committees

Postgraduate Scientific Committee

Name	Role	PG programme
Hind Alsaleh	Logistics Coordinator	2nd year PhD, Linguistics, Newcastle University
Joe Dean	Webmaster	2nd year PhD, Modern Languages, Newcastle University
Nancy Dieu-Ngoc Nguyen	Programme Officer	2nd year PhD, English Language and Linguistics, Northumbria University
Jasmina Pasic	Secretary	2nd year PhD, English Language and Linguistics, Northumbria University
Kinga Patterson	PG Adviser	Final year PhD, English Language and Linguistics, Northumbria University
Houssem Sid	Conference Chair	Final year PhD, English Language and Linguistics, Northumbria University
Ngoc Diep Tran	Volunteer Coordinator	MA in TESOL/Applied Linguistics, Newcastle University

Academic Mentors to the Postgraduate Scientific Committee

• Professor Billy Clark – English Language and Linguistics, Humanities Department, Northumbria University
• Professor Karen Corrigan – Director of Research in Linguistics, Newcastle University and Professor of Linguistics and English Language, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University
• Dr Dan Duncan – Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University
• Dr Damien Hall – Senior Lecturer in French Linguistics, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University
• Dr Mimi Huang – Senior Lecturer and PGR Lead, English Language and Linguistics, Humanities Department, Northumbria University
• Dr Niamh Kelly – Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University
• Dr Alex Leung – Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics, Humanities Department, Northumbria University
• Dr Robert McKenzie – Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics, Humanities Department, Northumbria University
• Dr Nick Riches – Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Pathology, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University
• Professor Michelle Sheehan – Professor of Linguistics, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University
• Dr William van der Wurff – Senior Lecturer, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University

Contacts

General enquiries: nnpcill15@northumbria.ac.uk