Dr Robbie Love

Office: NW905, School of Social Sciences and Humanities

Email: r.love@aston.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0) 121 204 4122

Website: robbielove.org

Twitter: @lovermob

I am a Lecturer in English Language in the Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Humanities and convenor of the Aston Corpus Linguistics Research Group. 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 and Literature in Education (UG/PG)
• Language in the News Media (UG)

Teaching Period 2

• Crime Fiction (UG)
• Multimodal Analysis (UG/PG)
• Practical Applications of Language Description (UG)

Teaching Period 3

• Analysing Discourse (PG)

I have previously taught on the following modules:

• Advanced Topics in Sociolinguistics (UG)

• Examinations / Academic Offences Officer, Department of English
• Marketing and Outreach Officer, Department of English
• Member of the university Senate

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

• English corpus linguistics: corpus design, corpus data collection, multimodal corpora, spoken discourse, spoken grammar, language change, news/media discourse analysis
• language in mainstream education: the secondary transition, academic language, teacher talk, relationships and sex education

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

• 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).

I am a member of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, where I sit on 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.