This study reports on a corpus analysis of samples of online and face-to-face intercultural communication among a group of British and Taiwanese adolescents, with the aim of exploring the particular lexical, grammatical and discourse features of the online and spoken discourse from three perspectives: a keyness approach, a discourse analytical perspective and a multi-word sequence perspective. Keyness approach brings together three levels of keyness analysis: keywords, semantic domains and parts-of-speech, and further highlights those linguistic features that deserve particular attention. Furthermore, a discourse analytical approach adds greater detail and depth of description of language patterning by examining the particular linguistic features in context. Such findings that pertain to discourse and pragmatic functions in context are not likely to be made when only keyness is examined. The third approach of this thesis focuses on recurrent multi-word sequences, paying particular attention to their discourse functions in online and spoken settings. It is evident that multi-word sequences often perform systematic discourse functions, even though they do not usually constitute complete grammatical or idiomatic structures. The approach also examines the developmental perspectives of multi-word sequences, showing that intercultural contact with native speakers of English fosters the longitudinal development of the use of sequences by the Taiwanese learners. The method here, which focuses on naturally occurring language output, diminishes the effects of the artificial contexts often created in language testing settings. In light of the potential significance of the research to EFL pedagogy, the thesis further reports on the extent to which EFL textbooks used in Taiwan represent the particular linguistic features identified in authentic intercultural communication. The research findings demonstrate the pedagogical merit of the analyses of the three perspectives and thus help in the design of courses for adolescent intercultural interaction in both online and face-to-face settings.

This study develops and proposes a research approach founded on linking two novel theoretical frameworks for analysing and explaining relational strategies at intercultural workplace meetings, namely, the Multi-Level Model (MLM) and Cultural Self Perception (CSP). The approach is tested through a case study of a problematic meeting in an intercultural workplace in China. At this meeting, the Chinese and western expatriate participants both carefully adopted a range of relational strategies for problem talk. However, the interactions still evolved into a severe confrontation between the Chinese and expatriate participants. The cultural differences in relational strategies are explored on three levels, namely, tum-taking, speech act and situational context. The analysis indicates that while the relational strategies of the expatriate speakers can only be found on the speech act level, those of the Chinese speakers can be found on all of the three levels. Even on the speech act level, there are significant differences between the Chinese and expatriate speakers. It is argued that the communicative breakdown was caused by clashes of expectations of relational strategies for problem talk at meetings, and such differences can be explained by drawing on the framework of CSP. The investigation in this case study thus demonstrates that the combination of the frameworks of MLM and CSP can facilitate both systematic analysis of interactive strategies at different levels and in-depth understanding of the cultural roots for the choices of relational strategies at intercultural workplace meetings.

The practice of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in the British context has evolved to a point where varied and complex patterns of classroom interaction have become the norm, and where teacher independent activities have become an important vehicle for language learning. In this climate, there is a need for novice English Language Teachers to adopt a major role as managers of learning. Whilst there has been much emphasis in recent Second Language Acquisition Research on the relationship between activity type and output from language learners, there have been fewer studies on the relationship between activity based pedagogy and teacher- generated language output. Using transcribed audio recordings from twenty-two entire lessons conducted by novice teachers, together with data from interviews and stimulated recall-based assignments, the author investigates aspects of lesson staging, classroom interaction and teacher role, as they are manifested through the language that the teachers use in their classes. Three types of teacher-generated language are identified. From these, it is suggested that the functions of structuring and rapport-enhancing have significance in lesson stages involving the setting up of teacher-independent activities. The complexity of the relationship between these two functions, seen in the context of entire lessons, reveals individual differences amongst the novice teacher subjects. implications of this research for Teacher Education are discussed, and the thesis ends with practical suggestions relevant to the content of Language Teacher Education Courses.

Learner autonomy is widely recognised as a desirable goal in tertiary education as it is found to comply with learner-centred approaches and enable students to pursue life-long learning (Sinclair, 2000a; Ciekanski, 2007). In language teaching and learning literature, it has become the main interest of researchers and practitioners who believe that learner autonomy can enhance students’ chance for success in learning a language. A great amount of research has been done to investigate various ways to foster learner autonomy in language teaching around the world (e.g., Benson, 2001; Breeze, 2002; Chan, 2001; Cotterall, 1995; Dam, 1995; Jing, 2006; Lo, 2010; L.C.T. Nguyen and Gu, 2013). However, learner autonomy is still widely considered a ‘western’ concept and much of the research has either been conducted in a western context or based on the western view of learner autonomy (Pierson, 1996, Sinclair, 2000a; Chan, 2001). This research aimed to gain more understanding of the development of learner autonomy in English language learning among students at a private university in Hochiminh city, Vietnam. The study has revealed that the major perception of learner autonomy in this Vietnamese context relates to ‘taking the initiative’ in learning, especially in selfstudy. The type of learner autonomy, as understood and practised by students in the context of Vietnamese tertiary education, has been argued to have the characteristics of Littlewood’s (1999) reactive autonomy. This finding lends itself to the application of Sinclair’s (2000a) teacher-guided/learner-decided approach to promoting learner autonomy. In other words, an integrated learner training programme (ILTP), which gradually developed students’ capacity to take more control in the learning process by providing them with metacognitive strategies for learning management, raising their awareness of themselves as learners and of the learning context, and encouraging them to explore the English language and its learning strategies, was perceived to foster the students’ willingness and enhance their ability to take the initiative in learning and create a habit of engaging more in self-directed learning. This study has also identified certain obstacles to promoting learner autonomy in Vietnam. In particular, the exam-oriented educational context poses significant challenges to both teachers and students in their efforts to promote autonomous learning. These difficulties include time constraints and a stringent syllabus. In addition to the contextual constraints, the large power distance between teachers and students in Vietnamese culture was also suggested to be a factor in hindering learner autonomy because it results in teacher reliance and an authoritarian view of the roles of teachers in the language classroom. This cultural trait, combined with the contextual constraints, seems to discourage teachers from giving students more control in the classroom and, at the same time, inhibits students from taking such control.

This study offers a contribution to the discourses surrounding 'silence', arguing that the transformation of the meaning of silence as it shifts between contexts depends upon what it is being defined in opposition to, and that in each case, what is posited in the space marked by silence is of central importance to the discourse surrounding this context. Aware of the interdisciplinary engagements with silence, this thesis presupposes that silence is not 'nothing', and that the question of agency is central to the distinctions between silences. Drawing on a number of theoretical perspectives pertinent to each context, this thesis proceeds by engaging with silence as it is featured in discourses surrounding animals, trauma, secrecy, and listening. These theoretical perspectives are explored also through a number of cultural texts - creative nonfiction, short stories, film, poetry, and also testimony. These case studies are not only illustrative, but also offer further perspectives on each context, and the meaning generated for silence. Unlike most other engagements with silence, this thesis not only takes the definition of silence to be unstable and changeable, but also confronts the question of why 'silence' is used in these discourses, positing that it is its association with space that is being drawn upon across these contexts. This thesis argues that it is because 'silence' comes to be figured as a creator of space, what is at issue in these contexts is what is conceived of as being in this space of silence - Otherness, isolation, individuality, intersubjectivity.

This thesis addresses a largely unexplored territory in second language motivation research. Its focus was to account for unusual persistence, effort and success among learners acquiring additional language(s) in conjunction with a sacred or special text. More specifically, the project sought to identify the factors, mechanisms and conditions that contributed to exceptionally high motivation for SLA. The guiding theoretical frameworks were Ushioda's Person-in Context relational theory and Dornyei's L2 Motivational Self System. A qualitative research approach was employed which included a series of in-depth interviews with 20 highly successful language learners. The findings confirmed both Ushioda's and Dornyei's theories. The Person-in-Context relational theory was helpful in understanding the significant role of the wider socio-religious context in which learners lived their lives. In addition, the three core components of the L2 Motivational Self System (Ideal L2 Self, Ought-to L2 Self and the language learning environment) shed light on these important components in the informants' learning trajectories. The research identified an ideal self in the form of a spiritual vision core to the informants' identities. In addition, the L2 vision was identified as inseparable corollary that enabled informants to achieve their spiritual vision. The third key component in the motivational matrix was the sacred text. However, beyond ideal selves, participants envisioned a shared ideal future grounded in imagined faith communities with concerns for broader societal well-being. The shared ideal future took form in the informants' imagination, not only within their lifetime, but beyond, extending to an 'ultimate' environment. The thesis includes implications for motivational researchers, language teachers and learners.

In this thesis, systemic functional linguistics’ long-assumed ‘context-metafunction hook-up’ hypothesis is subjected to its first large-scale, data-driven exploration. The claims embodied in the ‘context-metafunction hook-up’ hypothesis (henceforth CMHH) concern the relationship between language and context. Viewed as a set of relationships modelled with systemic primacy, linguistic phenomena group into three metafunctional sorts according to systemic functional linguists. The CMHH claims that these three metafunctional groupings correspond to three parameters of semiotic context such that they share a realisational relationship. The CMHH is one of the assumed strengths of the theory of systemic functional linguistics (henceforth SFL). Yet, despite its centrality to wider SFL research, ventures to test it on large-scale with naturally occurring language data are notable by their absence in SFL work. This project takes a step in the direction of filling the aforementioned void. Adopting Martin’s model of the contextual mode parameter as a starting point, the project proceeds on the assumption that if SFL’s CMHH is predictively sound, variation in ‘mode of discourse’ should correlate with variation in the occurrence of ellipsis in text. Assembling four different sub-corpora of natural language data varied in their contextual mode values following Martin – but otherwise in contextual identity – cases of ellipsis are coded along several variables. Statistical calculations are conducted on the results of this analysis. These calculations allow for detailed cross corpora comparisons which in turn allow for conclusions relative to the central research question to be drawn. The results suggest support for the CMHH at a broad level of generality. The most significant results in this regard are: (i) ellipsis is found to be more frequent the more ancillary a text’s context is; and (ii) the more ancillary a text’s context, the greater proportion of its instances of ellipsis are of the situational, rather than textual, type.

This thesis examines the order in which attributive adjectives are placed when appearing in a string modifying the same head noun. Noun phrases featuring more than one adjective are examined in six languages, all of which have modification patterns which exhibit distinctive patterns of syntax and morphology. Northern Sotho is a Bantu language with postnominal adjectives, agglutinative morphology and qualificative particles which link modifier and head; Welsh also has predominantly postnominal adjectives but less complex adjectival morphology. Polish and English adjectives typically appear before the noun, and the order in which they are sequenced is compared with Chinese, in which all modification appears before the noun, including relative clauses. I also examine the syntax of adjective strings in Tagalog, an Austronesian language in which adjectives can appear both before and after the noun, and in which the nature of lexical categories is particularly complex. The universality of the adjective class has generated considerable debate among linguists, with much discussion in the last decade with regard to whether adjectives constitute a independent lexical category across all languages. Chinese, Tagalog and Northern Sotho are all languages in which the nature of the adjectival category has been questioned, and this comparative analysis of a syntactic phenomenon which is an essential characteristic of adjectives adds a new dimension to the debate surrounding the universality of the adjective class. Based on a combination of corpus data and field-based methods, I analyse the patterns which appear across the languages in my sample. I evaluate the various explanations of the different factors which affect the order in which English adjectives are placed ahead of a noun, and relate my findings to equivalent structures in each of my focus languages, before proposing some conventions which appear to be consistent across a representative sample of languages.

The Ugandan Deaf Community, consisting of approximately 25,000 sign language users, has seen significant developments in its recent history. Government recognition of sign language, establishment of schools for the deaf, and the beginnings of research into Ugandan Sign Language (UgSL) have been important milestones. While Deaf Ugandans are entering university level education for the first time, a number of challenges to the community remain. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the linguistic structures of UgSL in order to produce a description of the language’s morphosyntax. There is a close relationship between word (or sign) properties and syntactic expressions, so UgSL is described here in terms of its morphosyntactic constructions, rather than a differentiation between morphological and syntactic features (cf. Croft 2001; Wilkinson 2013:260). While a substantial number of such descriptions exist for languages outside of Africa, this thesis is the first attempt at describing the morphosyntax of an African sign language. Many African sign languages are severely under-documented, and some are endangered. This study uses an inductive approach and a corpus-based methodology, examining how UgSL signers construct utterances of morphosyntactic complexity. The thesis is in three parts: part I is an introduction and overview of UgSL and also provides the theoretical and methodological background; part II provides a preliminary survey of UgSL grammar to provide a sider context for subsequent chapters; and part III is a detailed survey of five morphosyntactic domains of UgSL. The author is a native Deaf user of UgSL and a member of the Ugandan Deaf Community, as well as being fluent in several other sign languages and participating in international communities of Deaf people.

This thesis reports on a mixed methods experimental research study carried out at a university in Japan. The study investigated the effectiveness of two types of guided planning treatment towards specific language forms. Specifically, English relative clause types OS and OPREP as well as 3rd person singular and plural. Two groups of Japanese second year intermediate level learners performed a series of oral narrative tasks that increased in complexity over a three week period. Both groups were placed under different planning conditions. One condition involved ‘guided planning’ which consisted of continuous guidance towards English relative clauses and 3rd person singular and plural. The other condition ‘guided and unguided planning’ consisted of initial guidance towards the target forms and then the learners received unguided planning during the rest of the task sequence. During the treatment, both groups were interviewed about their planning strategies. It was hypothesized that the guided planning group would produce greater developmental gains in accuracy compared to the guided and unguided planning group. Learners’ L2 speech was measured in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity. The results showed that the guided planning group produced significantly greater gains in fluency and accuracy compared to the guided and unguided planning group. In addition, both groups focused on form during the task sequencing treatment. No previous studies have appeared to investigate the effects of guided and unguided planning with tasks that are sequenced over time. As a result, the findings of this study appear unique in reporting the benefits that guided planning and task complexity produces on L2 oral development in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity.