NEWS & EVENTS


 

Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics Holds International Conference on Appliable Linguistics and Academic Discourse


Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics held the International Conference on Appliable Linguistics and Academic Discourse from 8 to 12 December, 2014. National and international experts were invited to deliver speeches during the event, including Asso. Prof. Karl Maton, Prof. J.R. Martin, Dr. David Rose and Mr. Yaegan Doran from the University of Sydney, Asso. Prof. Susan Hood from University of Technology, Sydney, Asso. Prof. Teresa Oteiza from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Prof. Zhu Yongsheng from Fudan Unversity, China. Close to 60 participants of 23 universities and educational institutes from mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and UK, attended the conference.


Asso. Prof. Karl Maton, founder of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), systematically introduced the foundations of LCT and its basic contents; Prof. J. R. Martin, internationally renowned Systemic Functional linguist, probed into the interdisciplinary works between SFL and LCT, and presented views on contextual dependency in history classroom discourse and semantic diversities in history and biology discourse; Dr. David Rose discussed about how to instruct students on academic reading and writing; Mr. Yaegan Doran investigated the grammar and genres of mathematics, and reviewed physics discourse from the angles of images and mathematics; Asso. Prof. Susan Hood expounded functions of genres as configurations of meaning and their implications towards academic research and pedagogy, and also presented her findings on the application of paralanguage in tertiary education, the critical status of graduation system in academic discourse construction and the influence of story genres in academic writing; Based on appraisal theory, Asso. Prof. Teresa Oteiza shared her insights in history discourse; Prof. Zhu Yongsheng presented an introductory lecture on LCT on December 7th.


Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics has successfully held three intensive trainings and three academic symposia since its launch this April. The international conference this time is an extension and summary of those high-rate trainings and academic symposia.


Martin Centre for Appliable Linguistics is mainland China's first research center named after the famous SFL linguist J. R. Martin. It aims to establish an international research center for SFL and its appliable study and to push forward the development of SFL theory and application by holding training courses, symposia, international conferences and fora, enrolling doctorate students, promoting international cooperation, and publishing academic works.


Zhuang Yixiu, Chen Yingtao
13 December 2014