Biographical Note

 

I studied English literature as an undergraduate at Durham, going on to do an M.Phil. and a PhD, on misunderstandings in conversation, at Cambridge. I taught General Linguistics at the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia before coming to teach at Essex in 1995; I was a visiting scholar at UCLA in 2002.

My research interests are in the field of Conversation Analysis. I am particularly interested in the relationship between grammar and interaction. Within this general domain, I have investigated how speakers use so-called 'discourse markers' (such as 'actually' and 'in fact'), and how they mark out territories of knowledge through reported speech. I have also published work with former PhD students on interaction in French and Arabic. I am currently examining how speakers use laughter in the course of reporting speech which is itself not humorous.