The Language Research Centre (LRC) is a global hub for single, inter- and multi- disciplinary empirical research into language data and processes. It draws together academics and postgraduate researchers from across Swansea University and connects their activities with those of the Centre’s global network of collaborators, research associates and distance learning doctoral students.

The principal mission of the Language Research Centre is to facilitate high impact, cutting-edge applied research across a range of domains (education, government, health, security, language policy, translation, psychology etc) and perspectives (lexical, morpho-syntactical, discursive, stylistic, computational, societal, historical, etc).

The Language Research Centre encompasses a wide range of fields that share a common focus on applied research into language. These include Second Language Acquisition, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Cognitive Psychology of Language, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Language Teaching and Assessment, Lexical Studies, Morphology and Psycholinguistics.

The Language Research Centre is home to a number of research projects, visiting scholars and PhD students, and hosts regular research seminars and workshops. Within the Language Research Centre are five specialist Research Groups: Applied Linguistics and Welsh; Lexical Studies; Security, Safeguarding and Policing; Translation; Second Language Acquisition and Language Teaching. 

Projects

Lexical Studies

The Lexical Studies Research Group, founded by Paul Meara in 1991 and formerly known as the Vocabulary Acquisition Research Group (VARG), is now led by Tess Fitzpatrick and Cornelia Tschichold at Swansea University. The group includes researchers such as Alison Wray and Dawn Knight from Cardiff University, with Meara in an emeritus role. 

Focusing on lexical research, the group covers areas like vocabulary processing, second language acquisition, CALL, word association, corpus linguistics, and more. The part-time, distance-learning PhD in Applied Linguistics (Lexical Studies) at Swansea has produced many prominent researchers over its 30 years. 

The group hosts an annual UK conference featuring notable speakers and publishes a regular newsletter to share updates. Recent research topics include pedagogical wordlists, lexical investigation techniques, vocabulary knowledge tests, and word interpretations in cancer clinics. 

Second language acquisition and language teaching

People

Co-director

Dr Vivienne Rogers's research interests fall into two main areas of psycholinguistics and second language acquisition. Firstly, she is interested in the link between learning vocabulary as a driver for the acquisition of syntactic features. Secondly, the role of language learning aptitude and working memory in instructed second language acquisition.

Dr Vivienne Rogers
Vivienne Rogers

Co-director

Dr Gwennan Higham joined the Welsh Department at Swansea University as Lecturer in October 2016, having previously completed a doctorate at the School of Welsh, Cardiff University, on teaching Welsh to immigrants; platform to an inclusive Welsh citizenship. She has experience in teaching Welsh to adults, especially developing Welsh language provision for immigrants. 

Dr Gwennan Higham
Dr Gwennan Higham

Academic Publications

students in library

PhD students that have participated in the LRC:

students in library

Awards and Grants

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AHRC Impact Acceleration Award (15k) and AHRC Impact Acceleration Award Secondment (25k): Pathways to the Welsh Language for International Migrants (2022-25)

European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020: Youth Engagement in European Language Preservation (2021-2024)

AHRC Impact Acceleration Award (£9150) and Y Ganolfan Dysgu Cymraeg Genedlaethol (National Centre for Learning Welsh) Research Grant (£5100)  Geirfa Gymraeg – Welsh vocabulary project.

AHRC Research Fellowship (£308,562) Finding, sharing and losing words: understanding the mental lexicon.

Welsh Government Project (£25k) Rapid Evidence Assessment of Effective Second Language Teaching Approaches and Methods (2019).

Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (£20k) Creation of the first Welsh medium online Biochemistry course (2017-2021).

Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (£2500) Nursing and Midwifery Welsh Language Taster Day (2022).

Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (£2500) The impact of the Welsh language on health indicators in primary health care and old people's homes (2023).

Research Wales Innovation Fund (£15k) The Use of Welsh in the Workplace (tv campaign and online series) (2023).