About this role
The Department of Linguistics and Communication seeks to appoint a Research Associate to work on the British Academy funded project ‘Language evolution and sociolinguistic variation in signing communities’ (or ‘EvoSLang’) led by Dr. Rose Stamp and Prof. Adam Schembri. EvoSLang tries to understand the factors which affect sign choice; why do some variants “win” out in language evolution and others disappear out of usage? In this project, we compare variation across three sign languages of different ages and sociolinguistic profiles: British Sign Language (BSL), Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL).
The focus of this position involves working closely with the British deaf community and collecting data from BSL signers. The research associate will work closely with the project leaders to recruit participants, collect and manage data, and code linguistic information from video recordings.