Dr Robbie Love

Office: NW914A, School of Social Sciences and Humanities

Email: r.love@aston.ac.uk

Office: NW914A

Website: robbielove.org

Twitter: @lovermob

I am a Lecturer in English Language in the Department of English, Languages and Applied Linguistics (ELAL), School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Convenor of the Aston Corpus Linguistics Research Group and host of the Aston Originals CorpusCast podcast. Before joining Aston, I held research positions at the University of Leeds and Cambridge Assessment English (University of Cambridge). I have a PhD in Linguistics from Lancaster University.

I am a researcher and educator in English language and linguistics, with a specialism in corpus linguistics. I mainly research spoken English – how it varies and how it is changing – using corpus methods. My book “Overcoming Challenges in Corpus Construction” (Routledge, 2020) describes my work on the creation of the spoken component of the British National Corpus 2014. I am currently conducting research which uses this and other spoken corpora to explore recent change in spoken grammar and discourse. In a nutshell, my research harnesses the power of technology to better understand how people use language and, ultimately, help people to communicate more effectively.

2021-22 (provisional)

Teaching Period 1

• Digital Approaches to Analysing Texts (Corpus Linguistics) (UG)
• Language in the News Media (UG)

Teaching Period 2

• Multimodal Analysis (UG/PG)

I have previously taught on the following modules:

• Advanced Topics in Sociolinguistics (UG)
• Analysing Discourse (PG)
• Crime Fiction (UG)
• Practical Applications of Language Description (UG)

• Director of Undergraduate English Language and Literature Programmes

• Member of the university Senate

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

• corpus design
• data collection methods
• transcription
• multimodal corpora
• spoken discourse
• spoken grammar
• language change
• news/media discourse
• applied corpus linguistics

I sit on the Editorial Board of the Humanities & Social Sciences Communications journal (Springer Nature).

• 2022: Principal Investigator, Aston Research & Knowledge Exchange Pump Priming Fund. 'Engaging the public: local government organisations' communications during the Covid-19 pandemic' (£10,453.80).
• 2021-2022: Principal Investigator, Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL) Seed-corn and network funds programme. 'Evaluating human and automated transcripts of speech recordings: implications for forensic linguistics' (£6,000).
• 2021: Lead organiser. BAAL/Cambridge University Press seminar. ‘Corpora in Applied Linguistics: Broadening the Agenda‘ (£1,500).
• 2020: Co-Investigator, Aston University Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture research fund. ‘Comparing media discourses of COVID-19 and HIV’ (£800).
• 2018: Visiting Research Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Post-doctoral Fellowship (Short-Term). ‘Updating AntConc for spoken and educational language data’ (£8,363).

2022: Aston Students’ Union Academic Award for Research or Dissertation Supervisor (winner)

2022: Aston Students’ Union Academic Award for Teaching – Engagement (nominee)

2021: Aston University Achievement Award for Best Newcomer (nominee)

2021: Aston University College of Business and Social Sciences Staff Award for Best Newcomer (winner)

2021: Aston Students’ Union Academic Award for Teaching – Engagement (nominee)

2021: Aston Students’ Union Academic Award for Online Learning (nominee)

I am a member of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, where I sit on the BAAL Executive Committee as Ordinary Officer as well as the committee of the BAAL Corpus Linguistics Special Interest Group as Communications Officer. I am also a member of the UKRI Early Career Researcher Forum.

I am available to take on consulting projects in the areas of linguistics and the English language. Previous clients have included Cambridge University Press, MEND, Mischief PR, the National Trust, Reed Business Information and TENA.