What is Modern Languages
Research?
Professor Pam Moores
May 2011
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to the many academics from across the country who participated in
consultation meetings in London, Leeds and Bristol, and in numerous subsequent
email exchanges. The author would like to thank most particularly Matthew Treherne
of the University of Leeds for his readiness to sum up exchanges and set the ball
rolling. Authors of individual case studies are acknowledged in the text.
Author
Pam Moores is Professor of Modern Languages and Executive Dean of the School of
Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University, where she lectures in French.
Chair of UCML for four years from early 2007, she has played a leading role in the
Shaping the Future project.
Published by
Published by UCML with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for
England.
University Council of Modern Languages (UCML)
t: +44 (0)23 8059 4814
f: +44 (0)23 8059 4815
e: ucml@soton.ac.uk
www.ucml.ac.uk
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial-No Derivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales
(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
www.ucml.ac.uk
Contents
Abstract
1
Modern Languages Research in the UK
2
Illustrative Case Studies
4
The Algerian demonstrations of 1961 and their repression
5
The History of the French Language in Russia
7
The G8 and G20’s position in global governance and the role of Japan
9
Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe: A European-wide project
11
Maintaining a regional language in the 21st century:
the example of Low German
13
Learning French from ages 5, 7 and 11: An investigation into starting
ages, rates and routes of learning amongst early foreign
language learners
15
Dante and Theology
17
Documenting varieties of the Romani language
19
German Autobiographical Writing in the Twentieth Century
21
Russian Media, Culture, and Conceptual Blending
23
Queer Cinema from Spain and France: the translation of desire and
the formation of transnational queer identities
25
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1
Abstract
Given the diverse and fundamentally multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of
research in Modern Languages, this document seeks to define the common
characteristics and articulate a shared identity for researchers in the field. It explains
why such research is distinctive, internationally recognised and valuable, and sets
out the reasons for its importance to our understanding of the world, to UK cultural
life, higher education, the economy, and the country’s power and influence. Short
case studies describing specific research projects and expertise are used to illustrate
both the scope and diversity of work in the field, and unifying characteristics across a
broad range of research.
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2
Modern Languages Research in the United Kingdom
Introduction
Modern Languages research in the UK today is extremely diverse and far-reaching. It
embraces such a wide range of languages, countries, cultures and disciplines that its
nature, identity and purpose are often not fully grasped. The statements below
represent the fruit of extensive consultation and exchange amongst scholars in the
field with a view to defining and illustrating the common features of our research. The
aim has been to set out in general terms the defining characteristics, scope and
value to society of this research in order to define our identity as a research
community, and promote better understanding and greater public recognition.
What we mean by research in Modern Languages

With linguistic and intercultural expertise as its starting point, Modern
Languages research is driven by the need for first-hand knowledge and
understanding of different languages, cultures and societies, and their
interactions;

it encompasses analysis of languages and cultures from the distant past to
the present day, enriching global understanding and cosmopolitan culture in
the twenty-first century;

it examines the ways that languages and cultures work, and the ways we
learn, teach, interpret and translate those languages and cultures;

it constantly crosses disciplinary and national boundaries, furthering
understanding of peoples and countries across the world, and their rich
diversity of linguistic, cultural and social expression;

it embraces and interfaces with a wide range of disciplines, being
fundamentally multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary;

it provides a multilingual dimension, and intercultural and comparative scope,
to research across the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Why it is distinctive, internationally recognised and valuable

It combines an independent external and often ethnographic perspective with
close, in-depth knowledge of diverse languages and cultures, leading to
unique insights and findings;
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
through analysis of human experience in cultural context, its implicitly
comparative lens deepens understanding of the relationship between cultural
particularity and the universal that transcends language and culture;

flexible and creative in its multidisciplinary approach, it
spearheads disciplinary innovation through development of new perspectives
and sophisticated methodologies for the study of cultures and their
interactions;

it is inherently international in outlook.
How these qualities make Modern Languages research
indispensable? By contributing to:

in-depth knowledge and understanding of the world, and meaningful
intercultural communication;

expansion of the UK’s foreign language capability, through enhanced
understanding of the linguistic, social and cognitive processes that underpin
language learning

the nation’s cultural life and cultural capital - its broad intercultural
perspective brings new insights, energy and diversity to the Humanities and
Social Sciences, enriching the intellectual life of the nation, promoting the
creative industries and economy, and enhancing public understanding of
national and transnational contexts;

our universities - it is at the vanguard of internationalising research practices
and scholarly collaboration, though inward and outward transfer of research
findings, facilitating international dissemination in a range of languages and
across a variety of cultures;

students - through engagement with this research, our students, who will
have acquired detailed knowledge of foreign languages in context, gain
access to new insights into language and society, and further develop their
intercultural awareness and skills, becoming highly employable,
internationally mobile graduates and global citizens;

the UK economy - it provides the linguistic expertise and cultural knowledge
necessary for international trade and global mobility, promoting national
growth and prosperity within the European Union and beyond;
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
the UK’s power and influence - it provides the foreign knowledge base and
expertise required for international diplomacy, the intelligence services and
national security.
Illustrative Case Studies
The outcome of research in Modern Languages may be communicated in various
forms, including traditional scholarly outputs such as the publication of books, special
collections and editions, journal articles and reviews; presentation through lectures,
seminars, conferences, workshops and textbooks; advice to government
departments, other organisations and businesses through expert reports, policy
papers and briefings; and engagement of the wider public through exhibitions, media
reports, interviews, websites and so on. In a digital era, when research is increasingly
published online and ever more accessible, in principle we have to have the search
mechanisms needed to enable all who are interested to access an extensive range of
bibliographical information and to sample research in the field of Modern Languages
directly. In practice, however, this work is unlikely to be grouped together and
presented under the general label of Modern Languages research. The purpose of
the short case studies presented here is, therefore, to offer examples that illustrate
the unifying characteristics set out above, and thus deepen understanding of the
identity, diversity and value of research in Modern Languages conducted in UK
universities today.
This selection of case studies is designed to serve as a starting point in order to
generate discussion, elicit complementary contributions, and thereby develop an ever
more extensive and useful, illustrative collection. The order in which examples are
listed is random, deliberately avoiding any notion of hierarchy or systematic
organisation, and aiming to emphasise diversity. All academics willing to offer case
studies which would usefully extend understanding of the key messages of this
document are invited to bring these to our attention at ucml@soton.ac.uk.
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5
The Algerian demonstrations of 1961 and their repression
Dr Jim House, University of Leeds
J.R.House@leeds.ac.uk
Through detailed historical study of a specific moment of colonial violence and its
memorial afterlives – the repression by the Paris police of a peaceful proindependence demonstration by Algerians on 17 October 1961 – this project
assessed the continuing relevance of the past to contemporary French and Algerian
societies. In doing so, the study engaged with hotly-discussed contemporary social
and political issues affecting postcolonial France and Algeria: colonial violence and
its legacies, colonial memory, immigration and racism.
Background and context
The project grew out of a doctoral thesis on the history of antiracism, and published
work on Algerian migration history in collaboration with Neil MacMaster. The aim was
to provide a new reading of the violence of October 1961 by situating the repression
within a longer historical timescale, and to trace the re-emergence in France of the
public visibility of this violence since the 1980s. Interviews allowed us to understand
the lived experience of Algerian migrants and the motivations of their French
supporters.
Description of activity
The book project, between 2000 and 2005, led to publication in English in 2006 (Jim
House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961. Algerians, State Terror, and Memory, OUP),
and translation into French in 2008 (Tallandier). A high level of interest in both
France and Algeria led to numerous invitations to present the findings of this
research, and engage more widely in debates on France’s colonial past. Specifically,
this involved addressing public meetings organised by town councils and cultural
associations, writing the text for a public exhibition, contributing to an exhibition
catalogue, advising numerous documentary film makers and a novelist, giving
numerous oral and written interviews to newspapers and radio in France and Algeria,
appearing on Radio France Culture, and working in an advisory capacity for France’s
national museum for immigration history (Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration),
in addition to academic papers in the UK, France, Algeria, the USA, Netherlands and
Morocco.
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Outcomes
These activities enabled me to gain a comparative viewpoint on academic and nonacademic approaches to the past, and how the October 1961 events are spoken
about in France in relation to Algeria. Meetings with prominent politicians (ministerial
level, mayors of large cities), diplomats and cultural activists offered the opportunity
to promote the idea that research and teaching in departments of French in the UK
are truly inter-disciplinary and multi-faceted, and have an important contribution to
make in re-shaping postcolonial studies and enhancing cross-cultural understanding.
The engagement with a wider public has in turn produced new teaching resources
(e.g. documentary films, activist literature) and work by research students in these
areas. The research has enhanced my cross-cultural awareness with regard to
France, Algeria, and the place of the Algerian diasporas in France. I am continuing
my Arabic language studies to enable further research using this language.
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The History of the French Language in Russia
Professor Derek Offord, School of Modern Languages, University of
Bristol
Derek.Offord@bris.ac.uk
The overarching aim of this three-year project is to fill a large gap in knowledge about
the development of modern Russian society and culture by providing the first
multidisciplinary history of the French language in Russia
This project spans the period from c.1700, before which France was unknown to
most ordinary Russians, until the October Revolution of 1917, after which most of the
few remaining French-speaking Russian aristocrats emigrated, many of them to
France. Its main focus is on the period from the mid-eighteenth century, when
French was coming to be widely used by the political and social elite, to the midnineteenth century, when social and cultural factors meant the use of French was
becoming more restricted. The project will include a brief examination of the status of
French in Russia in the late tsarist period and in the USSR.
The research explores, in the first place, how French influenced the Russian
language and Russian linguistic usage. (Much modern Russian phraseology and
vocabulary is of French origin.) It also examines how French affected the way
Russians thought about their own language. More broadly, it looks at the influence
French had on Russian culture and thought, especially on manners, social and
political attitudes, and various forms of Russian nationalism during the period when a
rich secular literature was being created and an emergent intelligentsia was
constructing an identity for the nation.
Little research has previously been conducted in this area, chiefly because the use of
French by the Russian nobility, as an aspect of elite culture, was of less interest to
Soviet scholars working within a Marxist framework than were the phenomena that
tended to break down that culture. Moreover, revelation of a strong foreign influence
on Russian life and culture could be adversely perceived in a patriotic tradition of
scholarship as capable of diverting attention from native Russian virtues.
The research draws on various disciplines, including sociology, cultural theory and
history, and the team will work closely with an international advisory board of
distinguished scholars. By means of a two-volume monograph, a website, the
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proceedings of a seminar series, a conference and a colloquium, and through a PhD
thesis, the project seeks to:

deepen understanding of the process by which, and the degree to which, Russia
was integrated into the mainstream of modern European civilisation during an
age when nations were being formed;

contribute to understanding of the development of national self-consciousness
and forms of nationalism;

illustrate the linguistic, social, cultural, political and intellectual effects of major
language contact, identifying both the benefits that bilingualism may bring to a
community and the anxieties and tensions it may cause;

contribute to the emergent field of historical scholarship on language;

promote interdisciplinary dialogue, throwing light on the extent to which theories,
models and methods can prove valid and useful across disciplinary boundaries.
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The G8 and G20’s position in global governance and the
role of Japan
Professor Hugo Dobson
School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield
h.dobson@shef.ac.uk
This ongoing research explores the development of the G8 and G20 within the
architecture of global governance, both historically and specifically during the recent
and intensive period of summitry since 2008 as a result of which the G8’s legitimacy
has been seen to erode and the G20 has risen to become the ‘premier forum for
international economic cooperation’. Since 1975, Japan has been the only Asian
member of the predominantly North American/European forum of the G8 and sought
to be regarded as a responsible member of international society, whilst carving out a
role for itself as the representative of the Asian region. However, within the
expanded forum of the G20, which includes developing and developed countries
(including five other Asian countries), Japan’s role is under threat. The central
question driving this ongoing research is how are the Japanese government and its
people responding to these challenges?
Since 2008, I have gained accreditation to attend the G8 and G20 summits held
annually in Japan, Italy, Canada and France. Specifically, I work in the international
media centres of each summit, which allows me to respond to events as they happen
and conduct interviews with Japanese government and non-governmental
representatives. I have also been available to speak to a range of UK, Japanese,
Chinese and global media outlets and provide them with informed analysis of the G8,
G20 and Japan’s role therein. These have included Japan’s second-largest
newspaper Asahi Shinbun (readership of 11 million), China Radio International (the
PRC’s equivalent of the BBC World Services), Kyodo News (Japan’s major news
agency and source of news for Japanese newspapers, radio and television), The
Wall Street Journal (readership of 2 million), and Xinhua (China’s major news agency
and source of news for Chinese newspaper radio and television). Next year, the G8
will be held in the US and the G20 in Mexico. I intend to apply for accreditation once
again and continue my research into evolution of these mechanisms of global
governance and Japan’s role whilst disseminating this research through global media
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outlets in addition to the more traditional outlets of academic journals and research
monographs.
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11
Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe: A Europeanwide project
Professor Naomi Segal, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies,
University of London
Naomi.Segal@sas.ac.uk
Background
This strategic activity was launched in October 2007 by the Standing Committee for
the Humanities of the European Science Foundation, whose UK representative I
have been since 2005. A small working group of four literary scholars on the SCH set
out to examine what research is now being engaged in by scholars whose formation
was in literary studies. We decided to define this interdisciplinary field of research as
‘literary-and-cultural studies’ [LCS]. The objects of LCS researchers are very varied
indeed, but the ways in which they read and investigate these objects are
characterised by a combination of four key concepts: textuality, rhetoricity, fictionality
and historicity. Our work included two meetings organised at the IGRS in 2008 to
which we invited around forty researchers, senior and early-career, from Europe and
beyond. In 2009, the current project, jointly funded as an ESF-COST synergy, was
launched.
Project
The overall aim of Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Europe is to encourage
European stakeholders, policymakers and research funders to understand better
both LCS research itself and its contribution to Europe’s responses to the Grand
Challenges of the 21st century. In the course of the project, run by eight scholars from
ESF and COST, four key areas of LCS research were highlighted and a Strategic
Workshop held on each: Remembering & Forgetting (December 2009 in London);
Cultural Migration & Translation (May 2010 in Dublin), Electronic Textuality (June
2010 in Istanbul) and Biopolitics, biosociality & the body (August 2010 in St Gallen).
In March 2011, a Strategic Workshop was held in Brussels to present to an audience
of European stakeholders the preliminary outcomes of these events and the first draft
of a Science Policy Briefing which will be published and disseminated in September
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2011. An additional outcome will be a volume of essays bringing together all strands
of this interdisciplinary project, which I will co-edit with Daniela Koleva (BG).
International and interdisciplinary impact
This project is both innovative and ambitious, since its aim is to reconceptualise a
field and contribute to a new way of understanding it, for the sake both of researchers
and of those who fund our work and who formulate the policies that make it possible
– at national as well as European level. The project reaches beyond the specific
research conducted by any one scholar, by placing that work in its real collaborative
and cross-disciplinary context and focus. For instance, in the London workshop,
cultural-memory theorists defined the centrality of narrative textuality in their material;
at St Gallen a historian investigating online gene histories discussed rhetoric with a
literary scholar looking at metaphors of grafting; in Dublin theories of linguistic
translation and publication history met; and in Istanbul a graphic designer and a
geographer debated the fictive qualities of SMS or online journalism.
English has been our main language of debate, but none of this complex and
enriching international exchange could have happened without the intercultural and
multilingual research and understanding of the original four MFL scholars in the
SCH’s Working Group.
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Maintaining a regional language in the 21st century: the
example of Low German
Professor Gertrud Reershemius, School of Languages and Social
Sciences, Aston University
g.k.reershemius@aston.ac.uk
Background
Low German is a Germanic minority language, spoken by 2.5 million speakers mainly
in Northern Germany. Two representative linguistic surveys conducted in 1984 and
2007 show that Low German has lost more than half of its active speakers in less
than thirty years, mainly due to the fact that speakers no longer raise their children in
the language. If these trends continue, it is foreseeable that within a relatively short
time Low German might be lost. Yet at the same time, recent studies show that
attitudes towards Low German are become overwhelmingly positive. What used to
be stigmatised is now considered an important part of regional culture and heritage,
and the regional administration supports the use of Low German in education and
also the workplace to a certain extent, devoting considerable effort to preserving the
language. To mention but one of the achievements of language planners and
activists, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was signed by
the German government in 1999, recognizing Low German as a regional language
worth preserving, supporting and promoting.
Research and impact
In May 2009 I was invited to give a keynote speech at the annual gathering of the
Verein für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, an organization dedicated to
researching and promoting Low German since 1874. At this event, in discussion with
scholars, language activists and representatives of regional government, a list of
research priorities was drawn up. The purpose was to focus on areas of daily life
today and critically analyse how Low German is presented, for example on the
Internet, in tourism, in regional advertising and in public language display. The aim of
further research in these areas is to enable researchers to advise and support
language activists and regional policy makers.
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Since May 2009 I have worked on three studies:
• Low German and the Internet: ‘Niederdeutsch im Internet. Möglichkeiten und
Grenzen computervermittelter Kommunikation für den Spracherhalt’ to appear in
Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik in 2011.
• Low German in public language display: ‘Reconstructing the past? Low German
and the creating of regional identity in public language display’, published in Journal
of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32 (1) 2011, 33–54.
• Low German in regional tourism and advertising: ‘A new role for Low German?
Language insertion as bilingual practice in the process of language shift’, to appear in
the Journal of Sociolinguistics in 2011.
A key finding of these studies is a matter of concern for language activists:
Low German is in the process of being turned into an emblem of a bygone age by the
tourism industry and many language activists alike, for example on the Internet. The
forms of commodification and identity construction analysed in these studies may
have their value for individuals and certain areas of business and commerce.
However, they work against attempts to convince parents to raise their children
bilingually insofar as they associate Low German with the past and a pre-modern
society.
Close contact is being maintained with the Institut für niederdeutsche Sprache
(Bremen) and the Plattdütskbüro (Aurich) as they are interested in the results of this
research. The findings will be disseminated in an invited talk on ‘Low German in the
public space’ hosted by the organization Oostfreeske Taal in Emden, Northern
Germany, in August 2011.
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Learning French from ages 5, 7 and 11: An investigation
into starting ages, rates and routes of learning amongst
early foreign language learners
Professor Florence Myles, Newcastle University
Florence.myles@ncl.ac.uk
Professor Ros Mitchell, University of Southampton
R.F.Mitchell@soton.ac.uk
ESRC funded project: Oct 2009-Sept 2011
There is worldwide enthusiasm for including second language instruction in the
primary school curriculum. In England, the National Languages Strategy (2002) set a
framework for the introduction of language learning in primary schools. This strategy
is driven partly by the popular belief that the younger the better, with the underlying
assumption that younger learners will learn a second language in a similar way to
their first language. However, the empirical basis for this belief is ambiguous at best;
there is little definitive knowledge about the impact of the age at introduction of an L2
in the classroom. This study aims to fill this gap, by documenting and analysing
linguistic development and the language acquisition process in 5-, 7- and 11-year-old
beginner learners of French in the North East of England. The project has four broad
objectives:
(a) to document the development of linguistic competence among young classroom
learners of French at three different starting ages, in primary and early secondary
school classrooms, and identify similarities and differences;
(b) to compare rates of development at different ages after the same amount of
classroom exposure;
(c) to document and compare classroom learning strategies used by children at
different ages and their attitudes to language learning;
(d) through this evidence, to contribute to theoretical understandings of language
learning among young learners, and consequently inform primary languages
initiatives and educational practices in the UK and internationally.
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The project provides similar French language teaching to three groups of 20 learners
(with starting ages of 5, 7 and 11 years), delivered in an age-appropriate manner by
the same qualified teacher following national schemes of work for primary languages.
The learners are tested at several points in time to assess their linguistic
development. The data is then analysed using computerised tools and made
available to the research community through a French Learner Language Oral
Corpora website (www.flloc.soton.ac.uk). In addition, children's motivation and
learning strategies are tracked, through classroom observation and small focus group
discussions.
The unique characteristics of the study lie in the ability to directly compare learners
starting from different ages while controlling and documenting all their input/teaching.
The value of this research is clear: it provides empirical evidence on classroom
learning processes and outcomes, which will inform primary language initiatives both
in the UK and internationally.
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Dante and Theology
Dr Claire Honess, Leeds Centre for Dante Studies
C.E.Honess@leeds.ac.uk
Dr Matthew Treherne, Leeds Centre for Dante Studies
M.Treherne@leeds.ac.uk
Since 2009, the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies (LCDS) has been working on a longterm and multi-stranded research project on Dante’s theology, building on the
existing research interests of the Centre’s co-directors, Claire Honess and Matthew
Treherne.
The initial phase of this project aimed to provide an overview of the many different
aspects of and approaches to Dante’s theology. In March 2009, funding from the
Faculty of Arts at the University of Leeds and from the British Academy enabled the
LCDS to bring together fifteen international Dante scholars to discuss these issues,
and to plan the publication of a volume entitled Reviewing Dante’s Theology, which
will provide the first comprehensive overview of Dante’s relationship with theological
thought.
Since that first meeting in March 2009, follow-up meetings have been held at the
Universities of Notre Dame (USA) and Cambridge. The project has been further
strengthened by various funding awards (from the Society for Italian Studies
Research Collaboration Fund, a British Academy Visiting Research Fellowship, a
Newton International Fellowship, and a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellowship) which
have both brought collaborators to Leeds from the US and Italy and enabled one of
the Centre’s directors to spend time at the University of Notre Dame working on
aspects of the project.
This preparatory work has led to the elaboration of a major funding bid entitled Dante
and Late-Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society. This project
aims to reassess our understanding of Dante as a religious thinker and poet by
emphasising the relationship between theology, society and culture in the Florence of
his time, and by exploring the connection between Dante’s theological thought and
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his poetic practice. More specifically, the project aims to examine the ways in which
theology was encountered in both learned and popular contexts in Dante’s Florence
and how these may have shaped his poetry’s engagement with theology, while also
considering the relationship between theological ideas and social questions. The
project will lead to the publication of two edited volumes and a number of articles and
book-chapters, as well as three PhD theses on related themes.
The LCDS has, from its inception, been keen to ensure that its work reaches as
broad an audience as possible. The directors have therefore worked to make the
findings of their research accessible in a variety of ways, which have included a
series of podcasts analysing both aspects of Dante’s text and the theological issues
which it raises, public lectures on Dante and his cultural context, and a concert of
illustrated readings from Dante’s text and relevant liturgical music.
The multi- and interdisciplinary nature of this project (which draws on literary studies,
art history, manuscript studies, theology, history and political thought in relation to a
foreign poet) illustrates particularly clearly the breadth of scope and the vitality of
modern languages research in the UK at the start of the twenty-first century.
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Documenting varieties of the Romani language
Professor Yaron Matras, School of Languages, Linguistics &
Cultures, University of Manchester
yaron.matras@manchester.ac.uk
This research documented the structures of dialects of the Romani language in more
than 150 locations across Europe, using recordings of questionnaire responses and
free expression. The recordings were transcribed and structural information was
extracted and entered in a database, which serves as a comprehensive grammatical
description in electronic form. This resource has been made freely accessible online.
For the specific, mixed variety of Romani used in England, an online dictionary was
produced. In addition to monographs and research papers, the project also produced
a series of audio CDs and multilingual DVD-ROMs outlining the history and present
status of Romani, aspects of Romani culture, and differences between the dialects of
the language. A comparative study of dialect diversity and the state of codification led
to production of two policy papers and a briefing for the Council of Europe and the
Expert Committee for the Implementation of the European Charter for Regional and
Minority Languages. Another study, which was commissioned by Manchester City
Council, focused on the needs and aspiration of the Manchester community of
Romani immigrants from Eastern Europe.
The research has had significant impacts:
Raising awareness of Romani language and culture
The online database and accompanying website have been accessed more than
120,000 times by visitors from over 45 different countries within a three-year period.
Reactions from the Romani community worldwide and links from other sites operated
by Romani associations indicate considerable interest within the community and use
of this resource for learning and teaching. Wide press coverage in several countries
has contributed to a rise in popular awareness of Romani and its origins, thereby
helping to reduce prejudice and modify pre-conception about ‘Gypsies’. One of the
project’s audio CD’s was broadcast in sequels on BBC regional radio. The
multilingual DVD was distributed and downloaded from the website in more than
12,000 copies (with probable further distribution in many cases) reaching a likely
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audience of over 40,000 worldwide. It has been used in teaching in schools in
Hungary, Poland and elsewhere.
Impact on language policy at trans-national level
The project’s policy papers and briefings have led to the adoption of an active
Romani language policy by the Council of Europe which embraces structural and
dialectal pluralism (rather than centralised unification). This has led in turn to the
launch of a European Language Curriculum Framework for Romani, which is
currently being adopted on a trial basis in six countries. A language course following
the Curriculum Framework is being prepared by a consortium in which this project is
a key participant.
Impact on local policy and community cohesion
Recommendations for an engagement plan made in the report to Manchester City Council
have been adopted and are currently being implemented in the South Gorton area of East
Manchester. This involves recruitment of Romani-speaking outreach workers and training
of young Roma from the community as interpreters and mediators, in order to facilitate
access to services and employment, as well as to improve community relations.
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21
German Autobiographical Writing in the Twentieth
Century
Professor Roger Woods, University of Nottingham
roger.woods@nottingham.ac.uk
Background
This project took shape against the background of arguments by some academics
that accounts of the past that deal primarily with social structures and institutions do
not capture the tensions and full complexity of individuals’ lives.. It has rightly been
argued that the varied perspectives provided by autobiographical texts undermine
generalisations by demonstrating how different groups – minorities and majorities,
intellectuals and people with little education, women and men - experience society
differently. This project examines the extent to which study of personal accounts and
sources that take the individual as starting point reveal a complexity and subtlety of
human experience which deepens understanding of societies that have undergone
major upheavals.
The Project
The project draws on the expertise of literary scholars, political historians and
philosophers from the UK, Germany, and the USA who share a broad and inclusive
understanding of what sources may be regarded as autobiographical - from
traditional (literary) autobiography to published and unpublished diaries, political
memoirs, letters, interviews, and even photographs. It examines German
autobiographical writing after major turning points in Germany’s history, including the
First World War, the Nazi era, the collapse of socialism and German Unification.
These turning points prompted an outpouring of autobiographical writing with a
variety of purposes related to the point in time when they were written. Some were
produced in diary form as events unfolded, others long after the event in
autobiographical form, but common to all is the attempt by individuals to make sense
of their experiences and to reassess their lives against the background of a broader
public reassessment of the past and struggles to promote a particular interpretation
of that past.
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The project was launched at an international conference in 2007 at the University of
Nottingham, UK, at which Writer in Residence, Annett Gröschner, discussed her
1998 book Jeder hat sein eigenes Stück Berlin gekriegt. This collection of literary
portraits, recounted in the first person, is based on Gröschner’s interviews at an East
Berlin Erzählcafé with an older generation of Berliners shortly after German
Unification in which they related their life-stories from the Weimar and Nazi periods
through to the end of the GDR. The project has led to the edited volume, German
Life Writing in the Twentieth Century, edited by Birgit Dahlke, Dennis Tate and Roger
Woods, (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2010).
Outcomes
The project demonstrates how the inclusive and multidisciplinary approach that
characterises much Modern Languages research can provide new insights into
complex interactions between individuals and society. Some of the case studies
confirm the principle that autobiographical writing is dominated in form and content
by the prevailing conventions of a group. Yet groups rarely show entirely consistent
attitudes and behaviours. More frequently the analyses highlight the conflicts within
individuals as they set about remembering their lives in the highly politicised context
of twentieth century Germany.
In its next phase the project will go beyond Germany, expanding its multidisciplinary
and international network in order to examine how individuals portray their lives
between compulsion and autonomy in countries with authoritarian regimes.
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Russian Media, Culture, and Conceptual Blending
Dr Anna Pleshakova, Russian and East European Studies, School
of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford
anna.pleshakova@area.ox.ac.uk
Funding from the UK Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies
(CEELBAS http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk) has been used to support the development of
language teaching materials based on the findings of my cognitive linguistic research,
and to organise a one-day conference on the application of cognitive linguistic
methods to interdisciplinary cultural analysis.
The conceptual integration or blending research framework (of Fauconnier and
Turner, 2002) has served to explore post-Soviet Russian media discourse in relation
to questions of national identity and political communication. The findings have been
reported at international conferences, and have been published or submitted for
publication.
In ‘Werewolves in Epaulettes’ (2008 - 2009) - a case study of the novel Russian
metaphor oborotni v pogonakh, research illustrated the utility of conceptual blending
as a tool for cultural analysis through the construction of the multi-scope network
‘werewolves in epaulettes’, and demonstrated that this metaphorical network became
a new Russian national construal of the post-Soviet mythologised concept of enemy.
In ‘Strike, Accident, Risk, and Counterfactuality’ (2007 - 2010), drawing upon Paul
Chilton’s (2005) framework of manipulative discourse analysis, a research project
looked into how, through exploitation of the ideas of risk and blame at the time of the
presidential election campaign of 1996, Yeltsin and his team of ‘reformers’
manipulated news media management almost invisibly with a view to restoring
Yeltsin’s political credibility.
A current research project, ‘Metaparody through Conceptual Blending: the Case of
Dmitrij Bykov’ (2010 - 2011), explores the revival of civic poetry in relation to the
nation-building process in post-Soviet Russia. The study shows that Bykov is
interested in the performance of metaparody (a concept introduced by Morson,1989)
rather than the revival of tradition per se. Using a conceptual blending research
framework, I explore the performance of metaparody in Bykov’s work through his
poem ‘Zaraznoe’ (Contagious) published in Novaya Gazeta in 2009. The project
examines how specific aspects of linguistic, cultural and historical knowledge related
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to the key Russian concept of ‘Self/Other’ contribute to the emergence of
metaparody.
A one-day international workshop (June 2011) on ‘The Use of Cognitive Linguistics
and Interdisciplinarity in the Area of Russian and East European Studies’ examines
the question:
How do cognitive linguistic methods allow us to map new directions in the exploration
of such issues as national identity, post-communist treatment of history, symbolic use
of language, and the role of the mass media in the formation of new social identities?
As interdisciplinary and explicitly language-based research, these projects illustrate
the relevance and value of Modern Languages research to UK understanding of the
world today.
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Queer Cinema from Spain and France: the translation of
desire and the formation of transnational queer identities
Professor Chris Perriam, University of Manchester
christopher.perriam@manchester.ac.uk
This project, involving staff from two language departments in the University of
Manchester, focuses on transnational sexualities and their representation in film. It
considers Spain and France as sites of production, distribution and reception, and
Britain as a site of distribution and reception. Its core concerns are lesbian, gay,
bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) films and their audiences; the processes of
transnationalisation in relation to cinema and cultural identities; and how the cultural
particularities of the countries and audiences in question interact with broader-based
and international understandings of LGBTQ identities. How do they come about, and
how do they feed into notions of ‘nation’ and ‘culture’?
The work involves archival and web-based investigation (including on-line forums
and fan sites), festival visits, film and performance analysis, and audience research.
In the current phase the archival and web-based work focus on questions around the
textual formation of LGBTQ communities (and the contested notion of ‘community’
itself) in Castilian, Catalan, French and Galician (as well as working with Basque, but
through translation). A book is underway on Film and Queer Spanish Culture which
has a special focus on independent, web-based film production and radical thought.
(It also covers some World Classics in Spanish). In the second phase, audience
research and related festival-based presentations of ongoing findings will involve
queer communities directly in a range of locations in France, Spain and Britain. In a
third phase, a series of publications (mostly joint-authored) will draw the materials,
languages, communities and images together. Engagement with local lesbian, gay
and queer communities and groups in the various language areas is essential to the
project’s contribution to cross-border and trans-cultural understandings of the
complex relationship of self to (queer or European) community.
The project has a cross-disciplinary remit in that it responds to current priorities in
Cultural Studies and Screen Studies research from an MFL base. Through its crossborder focus and the ability to access in-depth, language-specific knowledge, it is
designed to make a distinctive contribution to Queer Studies (an important but
arguably Anglo-centric field of inquiry) which has a history of bridging the spheres of
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scholarship and social commitment. Overall, the aim is to further the cultural
understanding of the mechanisms, strategies and discourses which add up to and
question the category of queer cinema in local and transnational contexts.
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