Qualifications
I have a degree in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh, and an MA in Critical Discourse, Culture and Communication from the University of Birmingham, where I also completed my PhD in English Language in 2011.
Biography
Before joining the Centre for English Language Studies, I taught English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English and School of Education at the University of Birmingham, as well as at Aston University and the Universities of Wolverhampton and York.
Teaching
I teach on the Centre for English Language Studies MA campus programmes, and convene the distance MA Modules Written Discourse and Classroom and Spoken Discourse.
Postgraduate supervision
I am keen to supervise postgraduate research in the areas of Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics, and Multimodal Communication.
Research
My research is in the fields of Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotics. I am interested in the relationships between the resources, linguistic and otherwise, that people use to communicate, and their social and historical situations, in a fairly broad. For example, my PhD on the word chav asked how this word was useful to writers in contemporary Britain and how its use related to, and contributed to, other aspects of social life, including class and power relations. In other work, I have looked at the linguistic and visual resources used to represent the ‘regeneration’ of British cities, and at the representation of ‘Britishness’ surrounding the introduction of the British citizenship test and English language requirements in 2005.
Other activities
I am the Centre for English Language Studies’ Welfare and Mitigations contact for both campus and distance students.
Publications
Bennett, J. (2007) ‘The discursive construction of British identity in six daily newspapers’ Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 15.