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Joan Beal's research on dialect and identity has had far-reaching educational impact. Her publications are widely used in other HEIs (both in the UK and abroad) and in secondary school teaching, with economic benefits for publishers. She has also influenced curriculum reform through her consultancy for AQA, the largest provider of academic qualifications for 14-19 year olds in the UK. Beyond education, her role as a media commentator and as a consultant for the British Library Sociolinguistics & Education department has led to greater public understanding of the significance, and persistence, of dialect as a means of constructing and expressing identity.
The University of Leeds has a long-established reputation for research into the identification of stamps used by potters on terra sigillata (`samian ware'), a key dating indicator for archaeological excavations on sites in the western Roman empire.
Publication of the illustrated index of these names in nine volumes, complemented by the ongoing release of the data to an online database, has made this research more accessible.
The index has given archaeologists — primarily community and commercial archaeologists beyond academia — a powerful resource for identifying samian pottery and dating the strata where it is found. It has also provided a valuable tool for museums' educational work.
Linguistics at Ulster has:
1) influenced public policy and provision for Ulster Scots through appointment to The Ulster Scots Academy Implementation Group, planning for an Ulster Scots Academy and publication of Ulster Scots language resources
2) impacted on public values and discourse relating to local dialects with consequent effects on educational participation and practice
3) underpinned developments in policy and training in Irish-medium education
4) transformed the perspectives of communities and professionals adapting to the transition of Northern Ireland to a multicultural, multilingual society.
Effectively it has changed how relevant stakeholders engage with issues relating to language, linguistic prejudices and disadvantage.
Mosetén is an endangered language spoken by approximately 800 indigenous people in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes. Many Mosetén children only learn the majority language, Spanish.
Research at UWE Bristol has resulted in the development of language materials for the Mosetenes, bilingual educators and other stakeholders. It has enabled bilingual education programmes, and inspired a new generation of Mosetén speakers. It has therefore had a direct influence in avoiding linguistic and cultural loss, and has helped the Mosetenes to preserve the intrinsic value of their language and culture, also raising the group's profile in Bolivia and beyond.
The research has informed and influenced the creation of language policies and educational strategies at local and Welsh government levels which have had a direct impact on:
1) expanding the domains where Welsh is used by young people;
2) embedding the tracking of linguistic progression between key stages;
3) expanding Welsh medium school education in the context of language policy for the normalisation of a minority language.
The research also informed the work of the campaign and pressure groups RHAG [Rhieni dros Addysg Gymraeg, trans. Parents for Welsh Medium Education], and Dyfodol i'r Gymraeg [A future for Welsh], which have elected the lead researcher, Gruffudd, as Chair within the REF census period.
In 2010 Fennell led an AHRC-funded multidisciplinary team developing new ways to analyse the digitised 1641 Irish Depositions corpus (AHRC-749-BF). The team developed an innovative collaborative research environment exchanging knowledge with IBM LanguageWare, Dublin, and modifying IBM's software to analyse variable, `dirty' data. Investigating evidential quality, language development and the language of violence and atrocity in 8000 witness statements, the research advanced a prior AHRC-IRCHSS-funded digitization project, creating novel interactions with an early modern corpus and generating new insights into the Catholic-Protestant divide in Ireland and the UK which impact on current behaviour, policy and historical memory.
Research carried out within the Irish and Celtic Studies Research Institute has had a direct impact upon government policy in Northern Ireland and has led to major benefits for the community. Our research into language rights, language and identity, the Irish language in Northern Ireland and minority languages in general has underpinned our collaboration with government in the development of language policy. This collaboration has resulted in our participation in a thorough examination of education through the medium of Irish: Review of Irish-Medium Education (RIME) and our development of a comprehensive languages strategy for Northern Ireland: Languages for the Future: Northern Ireland Languages Strategy (NILS). The implementation by government of the recommendations contained in these reports has impacted significantly on the community. Major impact will be demonstrated in the area of education, in particular Irish-Medium education (IME), but also in relation to the business sector and social cohesion.
Professor David Crystal's world-leading research on language policy, diversity and usage, conducted at Bangor since 2000, has led to a transformation in terms of public and political attitudes, both nationally and internationally, towards the nature and use of language in public and private discourse. In particular, the research has led, since 2008, to an increased awareness of linguistic diversity, changes to governmental policies on language, and the development of the world's first targeted online advertising technology, which today indexes billions of impressions across 11 languages to provide real-time data services in the emerging online advertising world.
The global workplace means that the staff at your local hospital, the pilot of your aeroplane or your teacher may be operating in a foreign language. Establishing their foreign language proficiency is crucial to ensuring effective communication. Not only this, establishing what one knows and does not know enables appropriately targeted teaching. We have enabled institutions and individuals throughout Europe to better understand the nature of foreign language proficiency, and, moreover, provided the means of measuring it. Our research led to the production of an on-line language assessment system, DIALANG, made publically available from 2001 in 14 European languages.
QMUL research into Multicultural London English (MLE) substantially contributes to the delivery of the GCE A level English Language curriculum and, since 2010, the GCSE English curriculum, which both have a compulsory focus on spoken English. MLE figures in 3 school textbooks and in a new QMUL online English Language Teaching Resources Archive that now receives 18 000 - 20 000 hits per month. The QMUL Resources Archive addresses difficulties in delivering the spoken English curriculum faced by teachers who are mainly trained in literature, not linguistics. Teachers and students benefit from new teaching resources including accurate linguistic commentaries on MLE sound clips and accessible summaries of linguistic research published in recent journals. The impact extends to the delivery of English Language curricula in EFL Colleges and HEI institutions worldwide, and to a wider public understanding of language change in London English.