• United Kingdom

    Accepting PhD Students

    PhD projects

    I would be very happy to talk to prospective doctoral researchers interested in any of the following areas:

    Literary linguistics: stylistic applications of Text World Theory and Cognitive Grammar to literary discourse and reading; cognitive poetics; pedagogical stylistics; stylistics of poetry; stylistics of children’s literature; poetry and wellbeing/bibliotherapy; First World War literature.

    Language and literature in education: applied cognitive linguistics; studying fiction; discourses about English in educational settings; integrating language and literature; reader response theories and education.

    Personal profile

    Contact Details

    Room: NW920A
    E-mail: m.giovanelli@aston.ac.uk
    Phone: 0121 204 3209

    Biography

    I am Reader in Literary Linguistics in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

    Qualifications

    BA(Hons) English Language and Literature (Liverpool)

    MA Literary Linguistics (Nottingham)

    PhD Cognitive Stylistics (Nottingham)

    PGCE (Open)

    Responsibilities

    Head of English, Languages and Applied Linguistics  

    Co-Director Aston Stylistics Research Group (ASRG)

    Research Interests

    I am a stylistician with particular interests in the application of Text World Theory and Cognitive Grammar to literary discourse, the language of poetry, health humanities, and English in education. 

    My monograph, the first book-length study of a canonical English poet using Text World TheoryText World Theory and Keats' Poetry: The Cognitive Poetics of Desire, Dreams and Nightmares, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2013. A textbook, written with my colleague Dr Chloe Harrison, Cognitive Grammar in Stylistics was published in September 2018, with a second edition due in 2023 . My 2022 monograph, The Language of Siegfried Sassoon (Palgrave Macmillan), draws on Cognitive Grammar to explore Sassoon's poetry, prose and non-fiction and is my latest output in what is a long-standing interest in Sassoon's work.

    More recently I have begun exploring the language of 'covid poetry' (defined as poetry directly influenced by and/or representing the experience of living through the pandemic). This reserach combines text analysis with reader response data generated from questionnaires and reading group discussion. Pandemic reading also features in The Lockdown LIbrary Project, a study of reading habits during the first UK lockdown in March 2020 that I ran with colleagues at Aston. Our book Reading Habits in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Applied Linguistic Perspective will shortly be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

    My interests in English education focus on applications of cognitive linguistics in pedagogical contexts, grammar teaching, and the ways in which literature is discussed and studied in educational settings. For more on this see the studyingfiction website which I run with Dr Jessica Mason (Sheffield Hallam University).  Our book, Studying Fiction, was published by Routledge in April 2021. My current work in this area is concerned with the value teachers attach to emotion in the literature classroom.

    For several years, I have co-directed the Integrating English project with Dr Andrea Macrae (Oxford Brookes University) and Professor Billy Clark (Northumbria University). We are interested in developing more integrated approaches to the subject at all levels of education. We run annual summer conferences for secondary practitioners, publish digests of research and teaching ideas to support English teachers, and act as the editorial board for Mesh, a journal for undergraduate students to showcase their work in integrated lang-lit studies. In 2017 we undertook and published research on the perception and awareness of post-16 curriculum reform amongst academics in university English departments (funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme small research grant).

     

    PhD Supervision

    I currently supervise the following doctoral researchers

    Ahcene Adjeb: Literary education in Algeria

    Shirin Sheikh Farshi: The cognitive poetics of drama

    Polina Gavin: Cognitive stylistics and ekphrastic poetry

    Caroline Godfrey: Genealogies of metaphors for curriculum English

    Christopher Walker: Stylistics and teacher identity

    Isabella Wetson: The pedagogical application of Cognitive Grammar

    Mel Wardle Woodend: Poetry and wellbeing

    Areas of research supervision

    I would be very happy to talk to prospective doctoral reserachers interested in any of the following areas:

    Literary linguistics: stylistic applications of Text World Theory and Cognitive Grammar to literary discourse; cognitive poetics; pedagogical stylistics; stylistics of poetry; poetry and wellbeing/bibliotherapy; stylistics of children’s literature; First World War literature.

    Language and literature in education: applied cognitive linguistics; studying fiction; discourses about English in educational settings; integrating language and literature; reader response theories and education.

    Teaching Activity

    At Aston I have taught the following modules

    Undergraduate

    Literature in History

    Literary Genres in English

    Stylistics

    Cognition and Style

    Language and Literature in Education

    Undergraduate dissertation supervision

    Postgraduate

    Cognitive Poetics

    Reading and Wellbeing

    Membership of Professional Bodies

    I am a member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (currently Membership Secretary), the British Association for Applied LinguisticsThe Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship (currently Treasurer), the National Association for the Teaching of English (member of Management Commitee) and the Committee for Linguistics in Education (CLiE).

    Professional/editorial offices

    I am editor of Siegfried's Journal, the journal of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship.

    I am associate editor and editorial board member of two leading international peer-reviewed journals: English in Education; and English Studies. I am also on the editorial board of Journal of Literary Semantics.

    I act as a reviewer for a number of other journals in stylistics, applied linguistics, literary studies, and education.

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