Senior Lecturer in Linguistics

Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8294
Fax: +44 (0)20 8980 5400
email: c.m.cotter@qmul.ac.uk

Areas of specialisation

Sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, news media language, endangered and lesser-used languages, Irish (Gaelic), language and culture, language and identity, public/written discourse, language planning and policy, technology and society, lab newspaper/publication projects

Publications

• “Prescriptions and practice: Motivations behind change in news discourse.” 2003. In Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4:1: 45-74. Special issue (refereed): Media and Language Change.
• “Language and media.” 2003. In Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2nd edition). William Frawley, ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• “Discourse and media.” 2001. In Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton, eds. Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell: 416-436.
• “Irish, media, and maintenance.” 2001. In The Green Book on Language Revitalization in Practice. Leanne Hinton and Kenneth Hale, eds. San Diego: Academic Press: 301-311.
• “The pragmatic implications of ‘boilerplate’ in news coverage of California’s immigration and race discrimination initiatives.” 2001. In Georgetown University Round Table 1999 Proceedings. James Alatis, ed. Washington, DC.: Georgetown University Press. 187-202.
• USA Phrasebook: Understanding Americans and Their Culture. 2nd ed. 2001. Hawthorn, Australia: Lonely Planet Publications.
• “Ensuring linguistic access.” In A People Looking Forward: Interim Report of the Office of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. 2001. J.P. Singh (principal investigator), et al., eds. Washington, D.C.: 41-53.
• “Raidió na Life: Innovations in the use of media for language revitalization.” 1999. The International Journal of the Sociology of Language 140:135-147.

Current research projects

• Completing book, Shaping the Language of News: The Practice and Process of Everyday Journalism.
• Revising papers pertaining to community discourse and identity in electronic environments, and to linguistics factors as human factors in aviation discourse (both co-authored)

Courses taught

• Ethnography of Communication (theory and fieldwork)
• Language Style, Standardization and the Media
• Language in the USA

Courses taught previously

• Media Discourse
• Endangered Languages and Dialects
• Public Opinion, Propaganda and the Media
• Journalism in the CyberAge
• Newswriting
• Copyediting and newspaper production

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