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Following the great success of the Free Linguistics

Conference (FLC) held in Australia by the University

of Sydney in the past 6 years, this year’s – for the first

time abroad – the 7th Free Linguistics Conference was

held in PolyU by the Department of English during

27 – 28 September. The FLC is the first conference of its

kind, and it was organised on a number of principles

that may be summarized as: (i) provides a linguistic

conference that is accessible to many scholars for it

exempts participants of paying registration: FREE; (ii)

provides a forum for linguist in all areas of research:

FREE of set themes; and (iii) provides researchers a

chance to participate of a FREE linguistic subdivision

academic setting.

The 7th FLC was a great success putting together around 130 participants from over 15 countries

(Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Ukraine, Philippines, Australia, UK, Taiwan,

Brazil, Japan, USA, Russia, Korea, India, Thailand), among others. Focus speakers came from different

parts of the world including Prof. Ruqayia Hasan (Macquire University, Australia); Prof. John Bateman

(University of Bremen, Germany); Prof. Douglas Biber (Northern Arizona University Arizona, USA);

Prof. Martin Haspelmath (Max Plank Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany); the founder

of FLC Dr Ahmar Mahboob (University of Sydney, Australia) and Dr Stephen Evans (The Hong Kong

Polytechnic University, Hong Kong). The range of topics included in this year’s programme as well as

the number of countries represented in the conference reflects the true principles of FLC.

It was with the spirit of FLC – to create space where linguists and other researchers with an interest

in language can exchange their work in a friendly and engaging environment – that the 7th FLC was

carried out at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Next year’s event is already open for paper

submission and will be held at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University during

26 – 27 September, 2014. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the participants, speakers,

volunteers and funding bodies for allowing this first ever Free Linguistics Conference abroad to have

achieved this highly reputed level of success.

Prof. Judy Tsui, Vice-President of International and Executive Education, welcomes participants from different parts of the world.

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Highlights

Prof. Ruqayia Hasan from Macquire University in Australia is one of the keynote speakers.

pg23rd Language Arts and Linguistics (LAL3) Conference

pg5New Books by Academic Staff

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pg8Student Sharing of Summer Internship Programme

7th Free Linguistics Conference (27 – 28 September 2013)

The conference attracts around 130 participants from over 15 countries.

ENGLink is published by the Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Contact for contributions or further information about the articles:

Email: [email protected]

www.engl.polyu.edu.hk/facebook

Newsletter of the Department of English The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

8154_polyEI_e_op.indd 1 14年1月2日下午2:53

Event Highlights

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Dr Mable Chan was invited by an organization to conduct a half-day workshop on Business Writing Skill for the staff members on 19 July 2013. There were 30 participants from different departments

who joined the workshop.

The workshop covered topics including features of business English, the use of plain English, two main

types of genres (i.e. emails and letters) and business report writing. Students were very enthusiastic in

class and they shared actively with the trainer their use of English in the workplace.

The course was very well-received and Dr Mable Chan was highly commended by the students. When asked in the feedback form

whether they will take other courses offered by the same trainer, 100% of the staff gave a positive reply. In terms of professional/

technical knowledge, up-to-date knowledge, presentation skill, use of practical and useful examples, and question handling skill, Dr

Chan was rated well above 4.3 (out of 5). Some other comments received are as follows: “Very good! Thanks to Dr Chan. She’s very

enthusiastic and knowledgeable.... Focused content within a short duration… Relaxing atmosphere and interactive...”

Business Writing Skill Workshop for Professionals (19 July 2013)

3rd Language Arts and Linguistics (LAL3) Conference (29 – 30 September 2013)

The LAL3 Conference, formerly APELA (Applying Putonghua / English Language

Arts), was held from 29 – 30 September on the PolyU campus. LAL aims to bring

together scholars studying the use of literature, drama and popular culture in teaching

language. This includes proficiency skills, and also

multiliteracies, critical and creative thinking, ethics, civics

and intercultural sensitivity. It was attended by over

130 people including students from the MA in English

Language Arts (MAELA) programme.

About 45 papers were presented by academics and professionals from more than 25 countries/regions

including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,

Thailand, The Philippines, and United Arab Emirates. Paper focused on topics including the use of

literature in language teaching and learning; the use of drama in language teaching and learning;

the use of pop culture in language teaching and learning; and the use of creative and critical thinking,

ethics and civics, cultural sensitivity in language teaching and learning. We were very fortunate to

have three plenary speakers, giving talks which gave insights to different areas of language arts. These

were Prof. Ruqaiya Hasan from Macquarie University, Australia; Prof. John Bateman from University of

Bremen, Germany; and Prof. Kay O’Halloran from Curtin University, Western Australia.

During the conference, the launch of a book series related to the field of Language Arts and a Language Arts and Linguistics journal

was announced, and Dean Huang Chu-ren was on hand to comment on these initiatives. The book series aims to provide a theoretically

sophisticated understanding of literary texts and the volumes will have a focus on linguistic features of literary texts. The journal,

on the other hand, will cover the Language Arts subject areas: literature, drama, pop culture, as well as creative & creative thinking,

multiliteracies, intercultural sensitivity, ethics & civics. It will publish theoretically and methodologically sophisticated work, and to

provide a foundation for Language Arts as a research paradigm.

Prof. M.A.K. Halliday (left) and Prof. Ruqaiya Hasan are pleased to see participants of LAL3 come from so many different parts of the world.

MUST-5 Multisystemiotic Talks (21 – 22 July 2013)

MUST – “Multisystemiotic Talks” was founded in October 2006 in Helsinki, Finland, as a

research network for everybody (students, researchers as well as teaching staff). The network

is interested in multisemiotics and multimodal research approaches that have developed from,

for example, systemic-functional linguistics and other functional approaches to language. The

MUST-symposia have functioned as a meeting and discussion forum for members of Finnish

academic institutions and international visitors who are working on the relationship of various

semiotic modes in communication (language, images, film, music, etc.).

MUST has extended its co-operation in 2013 and the department hosted MUST-5 symposium

with Multimodality & Cultural Creative Industries as its theme. It took place in PolyU’s Shenzhen

Base Language and Multimodal Analysis Lab (LAMAL) from 21 – 22 July.

Professor Guo Yueguo from The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing gives a plenary speech.


This year’s ISFC took place in Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China and commenced on 8 July after a one-week pre-congress

institute. The congress lasted for one week from 15 – 19 July. More than ten members from ENGL and CBS, including faculty

members and research students, participated in the congress

and the institute. Professor Christian Matthiessen, together

with Professor Michael Halliday, presented a full-day lecture

to scholars from China and around the world, focusing on the

theoretical basics of systemic functional linguistics. In addition,

Prof. Matthiessen delivered a plenary talk at the end of the

congress as a perfect conclusion to the two-week event.

During the congress, the PolyU team presented papers on a

wide range of topics, showing the diverse appliability of the systemic functional theory. Tomoko Akashi, Eric Cheung, Nancy Guo,

Yolanda Zhang and Winfred Xuan, who are research students from ENGL, held a colloquium on complementarity between L1 and L2

language education, with Dr Marvin Lam as the chair. Mr Francis Low gave a paper on materialization of personal image and identity

in property advertisement. Dr William Feng talked about multimodal discursive construction of China’s national image. Nancy Guo

delivered a paper with colleagues from the Mainland China on logical grammatical metaphor in science discourse, with Dr Elaine

Espindola on multilingual comparison of recommending texts, and with Sonya Chik, a colleague from CBS, on the complementarity

of ergative and transitive models in travel and tourism discourse. Sonya also presented on theme and cohesion in legal discourse

in Japanese, Chinese and English. Dr Kazuhiro Teruya from CBS also presented a comparative study of these languages on register

profiling of reporting texts, focusing on the lexicogrammatical features of Japanese, Chinese and English.

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Event Highlights

40th International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC40) (15 – 19 July 2013)

The congress concludes with a plenary talk by Prof. Christian Matthiessen.

Teaching about ‘grammar’ in schools has been a neglected aspect of language and literacy

education for many years. Accompanying this pedagogical neglect, and in large part

responsible for it, has been neglect of the theoretical bases on which the teaching of grammar

might be rebuilt and theoretical ‘fuzziness’ about the purposes of literacy education. Professor

Geoff Williams from University of Sydney, Australia first addressed these problems at the

seminar by presenting some practical findings from a recent project. He then argued that

a transdisciplinary approach, rather than one drawn exclusively from linguistics, is necessary for the reform of grammatical study in

schools, and might well lead to children learning to use knowledge of grammar in ‘reflection literacy’, as proposed by Hasan (1996).

What should we do about teaching grammar in schools? Purpose, practice, and theory (25 July 2013)2

Multimodal Designs and Marketing Discourses – Cultural Icons and Branding (2 August 2013)

Professor Eija Ventola from Aalto University, Finland explored some of the ways that states

and companies use cultural icons for branding their countries and products in this seminar.

In Finland in 2010, a high-level panel of experts was set up to discuss and make suggestions

for ‘how to brand Finland better’. Prof. Ventola stated the need for setting up such a panel,

highlighted some of the issues raised by the panel and critically discussed the suggestions in the

light of analyses of some of the existing uses of cultural icons in ‘brand designs’ for Finland and

Finnish products.

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Multimodal Analytics: A Digital Humanities Approach to Analyzing and Interpreting Multimodal Phenomena (24 July 2013)

Multimodal analytics involves the study of semantic patterns arising from the integration of language,

images and audio resources in multimodal phenomena. It presents considerable challenges which are both

theoretical and practical in nature. In this seminar, Professor Kay L. O’Halloran from Curtin University, Western

Australia gave an overview of different tools and techniques for multimodal analytics developed in the

Multimodal Analysis Lab at the Interactive & Digital Media Institute at the National University of Singapore.

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Departmental Seminars


6According to Professor Kanavillil Rajagopalan from State University at Campinas,

Brazil, there are clear signs that help us see with reasonable clarity and certitude

when it comes to predicting the future of a language such as English. He pointed

out the language has already metamorphosed into something that neither

Spencer nor Shakespeare could have dreamt of in their wildest dreams. Prof.

Rajagopalan described the important changes taking place currently even as we

speak at the seminar and, on the basis of the scenario thus surveyed, made some

calculated predictions about the shape of things to come.

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Event Highlights

“OK, fine! You go ahead and talk about the Subject in the Danish imperative”. A small tribute to Christian Matthiessen’s work on language typology. (11 September 2013)

The seminar was based on on-going research in relation to a forthcoming new introduction

to Danish systemic functional grammar, and on a just published article in a festschrift for

Carl Bache; Andersen & Holsting. Dr Thomas Hestbak Andersen from University of Southern

Denmark, Denmark described and discussed the Danish imperative clause with an explicit

Subject. The typical imperative in Danish has no explicit Subject, which is due to both

grammatical and communicative reasons. The first impression, therefore, is that an explicit

Subject does not contribute with any new information in the imperative clause. According to

Dr Andersen, speakers sometimes choose to make the Subject explicit, and in his interpretation

this gives the imperative clause an authoritative overtone.

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Svend Foyn. Meaning potentials of monument and space (11 September 2013)

Professor Eva Maagerø from Vestfold University College, Norway explored the dialectical

relationship between monuments and space, the meaning potential of a monument

and how the monument interacts with and is affected by its surroundings. During the

seminar, Prof. Maagerø analysed one specific monument located in the city of Tønsberg

in Norway. The statue represents Svend Foyn (1809 – 1894), a man who is regarded as

a pioneer of whaling and processing whales. The analysis is based on a social semiotic

framework, inspired by Michael Halliday’s work combined with Michael O’ Toole’s three-

level rank system of analysis of sculpture.

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The Grammar emerging in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use (26 September 2013)

The present study argues that it is possible for grammatical innovation to emerge out of the

communicative demands of written discourse. In particular, the distinctive communicative

characteristics of academic writing (informational prose) have led to the development of a

discourse style that relies heavily on nominal structures, with extensive phrasal modification

and a relative absence of verbs. Professor Douglas Biber from Northern Arizona University,

USA expressed at the seminar how this claim is supported through discussion of specific

grammatical features (e.g., nouns as nominal premodifiers and prepositional phrases as

nominal postmodifiers), analyzing their historical development over the last four centuries in

a corpus of academic research writing (compared to other registers such as fiction, newspaper

reportage, and conversation).

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The future of English: a sneak preview (25 September 2013)


5

Department Updates

Dr Dennis Tay Published a New Book on Metaphor in Psychotherapy

This book represents a bold attempt to address contemporary issues in both metaphor and psychotherapy

research. On one hand, metaphor research is increasingly concerned not just with describing metaphors

in discourse, but how they could be used more adroitly in purposive ‘real world’ contexts such as

psychotherapy. On the other hand, while a growing number of mental health professionals believe

that metaphors contribute in some way to the psychotherapy process, their ability and willingness to

use metaphors might be compromised by a relative unfamiliarity with the various nuanced aspects

of metaphor theory. The present analysis of metaphors in authentic psychotherapeutic talk brings

these theoretical aspects to the forefront, and suggests how they can be applied to enhance the use

of communication of metaphors in psychotherapy. It should be of interest to metaphor researchers,

mental health professionals, and discourse analysts in general.

New Book by Dr Mable Chan: 職場英語(Workplace English for Career Success)

The second book written by Dr Mable Chan on workplace English was

recently introduced in July 2013. Following her first book 即時上位 — 名人英語全面睇 (Master Your English in the Workplace) published in 2009, this

second book examines workplace English in three parts: Introduction; Virtual Communication and Face-to-face Skills.

Part one Introduction provides essential information

about business English like its definition and features,

differences between written English and spoken

English, and the use of different non-verbal communication means. The theme of part two is Virtual Communication which introduces three common communication means in the workplace, namely email

communication, phone conversation, and conference call. Part three concerns Face-to-face skills focusing

on techniques to make effective interviews, presentations, and meetings.

Dr Chan actively promotes English language learning in Hong Kong. This book is another practical

reference book for anyone interested in the use of English in the workplace.

Dr Mable Chan’s new book was featured in the Hong Kong Book Fair 2013 in July.

Academic Staff Gave a Plenary Speech in an International Seminar in Brazil (8 August 2013)

Dr Francisco Veloso made a plenary presentation entitled A (re)construção da realidade: a clonagem da informação (The (re)construction of reality: cloning information) at the II Seminário

Internacional de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação em Segurança Pública” (II International Seminar

on Science, Technology and Innovation in Public Security) in Florianópolis, Brazil on 8 August.

This talk addressed the ubiquity of mass media and its role in the process of mediation of reality,

offering representations of events but also transforming and ascribing new meanings to them,

promoting the (re)construction of events and experiences through narratives. More specifically,

the main arguments presented in this talk are based on the analysis of a set of news reports

published in the Brazilian media covering urban violence in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil.

The analysis suggests that the media intensifies the general texture of experience by cloning

news articles by building new articles on top of older ones and generating a larger quantity of

texts that seem to suggest new information. It also suggests that the repetition and quantitative

(re)production of news on violence might contribute to a collective perception of insecurity. The

event was organised by Military Police of the State of Santa Catarina (PMSC). Florianópolis, Brazil

and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Brazil.

The talk by Dr Veloso also resulted in the publication of a book chapter under the same title in the book called Ciência, tecnologia e inovação: Pontes para a segurança pública (Science, technology and innovation: bridges to public security), organised by

Marina Keiko Nakayama, Luiz Otávio Pimentel, Fabíola Wüst Zibetti and João Alfredo Ziegler Filho, from the Federal University

of Santa Catarina (UFSC).

Dr Francisco Veloso receives the certificate of participation and a gift from Lieutenant Colonel João Alfredo Ziegler Filho.


6

Department Updates

New Academic Staff for 2013/14

Dr William Feng, Research Assistant Professor

Prior to joining the department earlier this year, Dr William Feng completed his PhD at the

Department of English Language and Literature and the Multimodal Analysis Lab, National

University of Singapore. His research interests include multimodal discourse analysis, systemic

functional semiotics, media and communication studies, cognitive linguistics, and English

language education. His recent publications include “The visual representation of metaphor:

A social semiotic approach” in Review of Cognitive Linguistics, “Representing emotion in film:

Integrating cognitive and semiotic approaches” in Semiotica, “Representing emotion in visual

images: A social semiotic approach” in Journal of Pragmatics, and “Intertextual voices and

engagement in TV advertisements” in Visual Communication. Dr Feng mainly teaches subjects

on (multimodal) discourse analysis, including “English Text and Image”, “Exploring Language in

Social Life” and “Lexis and Semantics”. He enjoys doing research and teaching at PolyU, and he

enjoys life in Hong Kong. Dr Feng likes watching movies and playing badminton in his spare time.

Dr Clarice Chan, Research Assistant Professor

Dr Clarice Chan obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Hong Kong. Before

joining the department as Research Assistant Professor, Dr Chan held the post of Lecturer at the

University of Hong Kong, where she coordinated, developed and taught a number of different

English courses, and was awarded the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award of the Faculty of Arts.

With a research fellowship from the Australian Government, Dr Chan conducted postdoctoral

research in 2011 at the School of Education of the University of New South Wales, investigating

theoretical and pedagogical issues related to English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic

Purposes. Dr Chan’s research interests include English for Specific Purposes (in particular, business

communication and English for health professionals), English for Academic Purposes, second

language acquisition, sociocultural theory, and cultural-historical activity theory. Her publications

have appeared in English for Specific Purposes, The Teacher Trainer, the TESOL Classroom Practice Series, etc. She has also been a manuscript reviewer for English for Specific Purposes and TESOL Quarterly. She is currently co-editing (with Evan Frendo) a volume for TESOL, entitled New Ways in Teaching Business English (forthcoming, 2014).

Dr Elaine Espindola, Instructor

Dr Elaine Espindola obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Federal University of Santa

Catarina – UFSC. Soon after finishing her PhD in Brazil, she joined PolyU as a Postdoctoral Fellow

at the department in 2011. Dr Espindola has now got an Instructor post at the department

where she is part of the PolyU-Tsinghua U Centre for Language Sciences, provides support on the

Department’s Public Relations and Marketing work, and acts as an Academic Advisor for Year 1

BDLCC students. She has been teaching courses from English for Academic Communication, Analysis

of English Grammar, International Languages in a Globalizing World, Language Development and

Use, among others. Her research interests include Text Analysis, Systemic Functional Translation

Studies, Discourse Analysis and English for Specific Purposes. She is co-editing a Special Issue for

the International Journal of Language and Human Sciences (forthcoming, 2014 ) and her recent

publications include “After all what is Genre in Systemic Functional Linguistics” in ANPOLL,

“Systemic Functional Linguistics and Audiovisual Translation Studies: A Suggestive Theoretical

Basis for the Study of the Language of Subtitles” in DELTA and “Blogs viewed from the Context-

Based Text Typology: A proposal for textual analysis in Translation Studies” in Studies in Systemic

Functional Linguistics.


7

Students and Alumni News

Summer WIE Placement Programmes

The Department organized three WIE placement programmes for students of BA in English Studies for the Professions (BAESP) during

summer 2013. The students were given valuable opportunities to work in Australia and the Chinese Mainland. Through these offshore

placement opportunities, students gained hands-on experience in working with people from different cultures and gained a better

understanding of the workplace ethos.

Students appreciated the experiences through these placements, as reflected in some of their feedback below:

Southern Cross University Placement Programme (1 – 29 June)“My summer internship in The Northern Star, a newspaper company based in

Lismore, Australia, helped equip me in both marketing and editorial field, as

well as enhanced my business sense and adaptation ability in such a challenging

industry. Through this summer placement, I gained a better understanding of

the publishing industry and at the same time I could also have a taste of

marketing and business development in the workplace.”

Vivian Leung, Year 3 BAESP Student

Tsinghua University Placement Programme (27 June – 20 July)“The English Summer Camp helped me to broaden my horizon through working

with different people. Spending more than 3 weeks in this renowned Chinese

university provided me with a first person encounter with Mainland Chinese

culture. The camp also provided me a valuable experience of learning the

unique Mainland Chinese culture within professional settings. For example,

the ways they welcome foreign guests, conduct ceremonies and cooperate with

people from different places.”

Eunice Chan, Year 3 BAESP Student

Xian-HK English Immersion Summer Camp (21 July – 10 August)“Joining this placement as a student tutor inspired me to research more on our

culture. It was fun to exchange ideas with the international instructors and the

local students. I hope that everyone on earth would be able to learn, see and

appreciate the beauty of cultural diversity.”

Abby Cheng, Year 2 BAESP Student


8

Students and Alumni NewsStudent Intern for the Administrative Service Summer Internship Programme — Sharing by Justin Yuen, Year 3 BAESP Student

In the previous summer, I had the opportunity to work in the government under

the Administrative Service Summer Internship Programme and was posted to

the Sham Shui Po District Office of Home Affairs Department (HAD). This was a

brand-new and remarkable working experience and has equipped me with the

basis of working in an office and serving within the civil administration in the

future.

My major duties included replying to incoming correspondence received from

the public, taking part in various district council meetings, collecting views on

policies from district council members and the public, and at the same time,

drafting follow-up letters to various government departments and private

corporations for service improvements and engaging in outdoor district

management operations.

Working in the District Office and the District Council has provided me with

opportunities to meet district councilors and listen to their thoughts and ideas.

It also enhanced my political awareness on the dynamics of the council. Through

exchanging ideas and views with them, I have a better idea of the rationale behind their actions and standpoints on various issues,

such as street sleepers, ethnic minorities and urban renewal.

As HAD is regarded as a ‘front-line’ department of the government, I had

a lot of interaction with the public. One of my tasks was to facilitate the

formation of the Mutual Aid Committees for new public housing estates.

This is the most interesting and ‘down-to-earth’ task I have ever worked

on. It really gave me a chance to meet the public and talk to them.

Working in the District Office is truly an eye-opening experience; even

though I had to work late some nights, yet all the hands-on experience

that I had have increased my knowledge of the district and of Hong Kong

and these experiences have changed my way of thinking. For instance, I

would try to understand a social issue from different stakeholders’ points

of view, and appreciate the comments given by all parties. This internship

has also brought me new insights, particularly in the area of politics and

governance. I understand that the current government is facing various

challenges when they propose new policies, with the news media often

already shaping the public’s view towards government policies before

they are launched. My internship as an administrative officer allowed me

to deepen my understanding of how the government works and it has

also stimulated my interest in public administration.

Sham Shui Po is the home to many run-down buildings. One of HAD’s major role is to supervise the building management and the maintenance of these dilapidated premises.

During the internship, I had a lot of hands-on experiences, including meeting the public.

I have also taken part in many meetings on a wide spectrum, such as housing affairs, crime prevention and the Sham Shui Po Signature Project.


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