I. Introduction
The mission of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Linguistics Studies at Wuhan University of Technology is to leverage the research strengths of various departments within the School of Foreign Languages, uphold the university’s advanced research principles, promote team spirit, foster a positive academic atmosphere, enhance the level and influence of the university’s foreign linguistics and applied linguistics disciplines, and improve the social services of the School of Foreign Languages. The research directions of the centre include psycholinguistics, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, language testing, and language education. The centre focuses on cutting-edge issues in foreign linguistics and applied linguistics, actively engages in exchanges with peers and experts both within and outside the university, establishes domestic and international cooperative projects, and regularly hosts relevant academic lectures and seminars.
II. Research Directions
1. Second Language Studies
Second language research explores second language acquisition and bilingual processing from perspectives such as second language learning, language testing, psycholinguistics, and lexicography. It emphasizes theoretical innovation and addresses significant practical issues in foreign language teaching, learning, and testing. Starting from the growing demand for high-end foreign language talents in China’s new political and economic conditions and industrial development pattern, this direction closely revolves around the core issues of theoretical innovation in foreign language learning. It integrates cutting-edge theories and advancements in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines to conduct in-depth and systematic research on the physiological and psychological mechanisms of foreign language learning among various groups in China and Chinese learning by foreigners.
2. Teaching Methodology
Teaching methodology, an important branch of pedagogy, studies the general principles of teaching. The research object of English methodology includes the principles, methods, modes, means, and other aspects of English teaching. This field covers major schools of foreign language teaching methodology, including grammar-based teaching, translation method, direct method, situational method, audio-lingual method, cognitive method, communicative approach, total physical response, and task-based language teaching models. The research scope includes teaching methods for various types of classes such as phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation.
The current English teaching methodology system is continuously evolving and optimizing, transitioning from teacher- and teaching-centered to student- and learning-centered. It shifts from emphasizing language knowledge and skills to integrating practical teaching skills, and from theory-based to a combination of theory and practice. A mature and scientifically structured teaching methodology system requires a solid foundation in educational and psychological theories. It should consider the characteristics of language disciplines, as well as the cognitive and age-specific features of students learning languages, placing the cultivation of students’ language skills at the core of teaching. Research in teaching methodology often collaborates across fields with education, psychology, and second language acquisition.
3. Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive linguistics is characterized by the intersection and permeation of human cognition, language, and other disciplines, involving linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. This direction primarily investigates the relationship between universal principles of language and cognitive patterns from three aspects: (1) Cognitive Semantics: including morphological and semantic analysis; (2) Cognitive Grammar: understanding grammatical rules through the analysis of existing languages and understanding their underlying environments, habits, and metaphors, etc.; (3) Integration of Language Cognition with Other Disciplines: exploring the close relationship between language and other cognitive mechanisms such as psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. This direction also begins to explore two emerging fields—artificial intelligence and neurolinguistics, involving interactions between language and machines, language and the brain, and the intersection of linguistics with neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
4. Public Discourse Studies
This direction studies the application of language in society from various perspectives, including pragmatics, legal linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and text analysis. The feature of this direction lies in the integration of multiple disciplines, emphasizing the compatibility and complementarity of theories and methods across disciplines. It includes research on national discourse and rhetoric, the construction of China’s external discourse systems and rhetoric, second language writing and rhetoric, media technology development and online rhetoric, crisis discourse, new rhetorical phenomena and new genre writing, and foreign language classroom discourse, with strong social service function. It focuses on local research on pragmatic patterns in different cultures, emphasizes social surveys and corpus collection, and applies research results to guide social practice and international economic cooperation. By studying human speech behavior in communication, it reveals the interactive relationship between language, society, and culture.
III. Development Plan
The centre will actively cultivate leading scholars and direction researchers to build a strong academic team. It will actively engage in scientific research, exercise research capabilities, improve research levels and quality, identify key research topics, and publish papers or monographs with goals, plans, and focus, thereby forming research features and opening up new frontiers in research. The specific plan includes the following four aspects:
1. Developing academic features and advantages
Striving to improve research quality and to establish a well-structured teaching and research team, the centre will maintain close contact and exchanges with mainstream scholars in linguistics, inviting respected leading figures and promising young scholars to conduct academic lectures or specialized workshops, regularly hold high-end lectures, academic salons, and thematic forums to discuss academic hot topics, share literature reading insights, organize peer reviews of manuscripts and application reports among team members.
2. Using Research Projects as a Link
The centre organizes the entire team into scientific research groups in different directions, promoting collaborative research and individual development to form cohesion and centripetal force. Members are encouraged to choose professional directions, engage in scientific research, and encourage members to publish high-quality articles, apply for high-level projects, and participate in high-level academic conferences, creating a strong academic atmosphere. Members are also encouraged and supported to apply for national social science fund projects and Ministry of Education humanities and social science projects, and to submit papers to high-level domestic and international academic conferences such as TESOL Annual Convention, American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, International Symposium on Second Language Acquisition in China, International Conference on Foreign Language Writing Teaching and Research, and China English Teaching Seminar.
3. Balancing the Main and Other Academic Directions
The centre supports the development of second language, cognitive linguistics, and public discourse research in a planned and focused manner, ultimately achieving joint progress and common development. The centre implements interdisciplinary integration, enabling members to master the basic knowledge of theoretical and applied linguistics, as well as the basic concepts of other disciplines closely related to linguistics (especially psychology, neuroscience, data science, computer science, philosophy of language, and logic), and to master the basic ideas and skills of interdisciplinary research on language so that its members can be a new force in linguistic research with a certain sense of innovation. International and domestic cooperative research is emphasized by organizing international conferences or domestic academic conferences visited by international scholars.
4. Accelerating the Optimization of the Team
The centre encourages team members to pursue further studies, improve their academic qualifications, degrees, and professional titles, and coordinate the realization and development of teaching, scientific research, and social service functions. It also strives to form a virtuous cycle where teaching, scientific research, and social services promote each other. Its members are encouraged and assisted to apply for academic visits or doctoral studies, seek cooperation opportunities with enterprises to provide language services, and pragmatically advance interdisciplinary research in linguistics as well as the construction of undergraduate and graduate courses in foreign linguistics and applied linguistics at the school.
