Awards for our Higher Degree Research

The year ends on a final high note for our team with three awards testifying to the excellence of the higher degree research (HDR) conducted by our team.

Dr Hanna Torsh received the 2019 Michael Clyne Prize for her thesis “Between pride and shame: Linguistic intermarriage in Australia from the perspective of the English-dominant partner”. The Michael Clyne Prize has been awarded annually since 2008 by the Australian Linguistics Society in recognition of the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

Hanna’s research, which has just been published as a book by Palgrave Macmillan, investigates the tensions between English monolingualism and multilingualism in bilingual couples and Australian society more generally. She shows that, on the one hand, linguistic diversity is practically subjugated to monolingual English-centric norms. On the other hand, discourses which valorise LOTEs and multilingualism are widely cherished as symbolic of tolerance.

This is the third time the Michael Clyne Prize has gone to a member of the Language-on-the-Move team: the 2017 award went to Dr Shiva Motaghi-Tabari, the 2012 award to Dr Donna Butorac, and Dr Vera Williams Tetteh was the 2016 runner-up. Read up on these previous winners here.

Hanna’s book Linguistic Intermarriage in Australia: Between Pride and Shame was launched by Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller at this week’s annual conference of the Australian Linguistics Society and joins a growing number of monographs published by members of our team.

So much fun launching “Linguistic #intermarriage in #Australia” by @HannaTorsh 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 As befits the @Lg_on_the_Move team, author and launcher are already moving on to the next project 😊 … “Life in a new #language” coming soon #AusLingSoc2019 https://t.co/Gyt8Wl4MKu pic.twitter.com/JIcCmOGmZc

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 11, 2019

Dr Laura Smith-Khan won the Faculty of Human Sciences HDR Excellence Award for her PhD research about credibility in Australian refugee visa decision making and public discourse.

Laura’s thesis, which can be downloaded here, is a multi-level critical discourse analysis examining the discourse on refugee credibility in Australian media and public debates and visa review decision making. Drawing on newspaper reporting, public statements, procedural guidance and review decisions, it explores how dominant discourse conceptualizes credibility. It identifies discursive constructions of language, communication and diversity, and challenges these by contrasting them with the sociolinguistic realities. It finds that the discourse problematically presents credibility as an individual attribute of the refugee, and erases the effects of interactional context, legal and institutional structures, and discourse itself, on credibility construction.

Hanna and Laura both received their PhDs at a most memorable graduation ceremony in April this year, where Laura’s son stole the show:

Watch the adorable moment Dr @LauraSKh, from @MQLinguistics, welcomes an unexpected visitor on stage while delivering her #graduation ceremony speech. #mymq #mumlife #phdlife #AcademicTwitter pic.twitter.com/R6oUetj8vG

— Macquarie University (@Macquarie_Uni) April 23, 2019

And it is not only our PhDs who excel but our Master of Research students keenly follow in their footsteps: Samar Alkhalil won the Executive Dean’s Master of Research Thesis Award 2019 for her research about the promotion of English in Saudi Arabia.

The thesis, which can be downloaded here, examined the persuasion strategies and the ideological assumptions in a corpus of advertisements for private English Language Teaching institutes in Saudi Arabia. Findings revealed that the institutes attempt to persuade their potential audience to enroll by conceptualizing English as a global language. The advertisements also construct English learning as fun, personally empowering, and confidence-enhancing.

Samar is now building on her Masters research in her ongoing PhD research.

Congratulations, Hanna, Laura, and Samar! Your achievements are testament to the importance of team work and we are so proud of Language on the Move!

And if you want to find out the secrets behind our HDR successes, Laura spills the tea here.

References

Crock, M., Smith-Khan, L., McCallum, R., & Saul, B. (2017). The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities: Forgotten and Invisible? Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Smith-Khan, L. (2017). Different in the Same Way? Language, Diversity, and Refugee Credibility. International Journal of Refugee Law, 29(3), 389-416.
Smith-Khan, L. (2017). Negotiating narratives, accessing asylum: Evaluating language policy as multi-level practice, beliefs and management. Multilingua, 36(1), 31-57.
Smith-Khan, L. (2017). Telling stories: Credibility and the representation of social actors in Australian asylum appeals. Discourse & Society, 28(5), 512-534.
Smith-Khan, L. (2019). Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees. Language in Society, 48(3), 403-427.
Smith-Khan, L. (2019). Debating credibility: Refugees and rape in the media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 42(1), 4-36.
Torsh, H. (2020). Linguistic Intermarriage in Australia: Between Pride and Shame. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.