Nick Wilson
My research has focused on how leadership and team identity are formed through discourse. Unlike many other researchers, I have chosen to carry out this research within sports teams, specifically rugby teams.
My MSc research (at the University of Edinburgh) laid the basis for this, examining the multiplicity of leadership styles that are routinely used by rugby coaches, and how their language use, while not 'polite' by outside standards, is highly appropriate for what they do.
My PhD research (at Victoria University of Wellington) took this a stage further and investigated the construction of leadership identity in more detail, as well as examining the way in which an identity is formed for the team that can be used in motivating the players to perform well on the field of play.
I have also been involved in research on access to education for Refugee Background Students in New Zealand, and have a keen interest in using language research to address social issues and to help people in vulnerable situations.
Some of my other research examines how communicative ability can be measured in vulnerable populations without formal testing. This research is conducted in collaboration with Street Football Wales, a charity who aim to provide support for homeless people through participation in football teams.
Most recently, I have begun research on the sociolinguistic variation of the way in which "the" is pronounced before vowels in a dataset collected whilst working at Cardiff University.
I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney.
My MSc research (at the University of Edinburgh) laid the basis for this, examining the multiplicity of leadership styles that are routinely used by rugby coaches, and how their language use, while not 'polite' by outside standards, is highly appropriate for what they do.
My PhD research (at Victoria University of Wellington) took this a stage further and investigated the construction of leadership identity in more detail, as well as examining the way in which an identity is formed for the team that can be used in motivating the players to perform well on the field of play.
I have also been involved in research on access to education for Refugee Background Students in New Zealand, and have a keen interest in using language research to address social issues and to help people in vulnerable situations.
Some of my other research examines how communicative ability can be measured in vulnerable populations without formal testing. This research is conducted in collaboration with Street Football Wales, a charity who aim to provide support for homeless people through participation in football teams.
Most recently, I have begun research on the sociolinguistic variation of the way in which "the" is pronounced before vowels in a dataset collected whilst working at Cardiff University.
I am currently a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney.
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Chapters by Nick Wilson
Papers by Nick Wilson
Context of the report
There are a number of phases to this study, only the first two of which are covered in our report:
National survey of students about the impact of the withdrawal of study grants.
Follow up interview with a sample of students to compare what they said they would study and what they actually did in 2011.
Audit of TEI websites (subject of separate report) (refer to preliminary findings from Kindon et al)
Interviews with ESOL professionals in TEIs (subject of separate report: forthcoming).
Participatory workshops with RBS about their study experiences in TEIs (subject of separate report: forthcoming)
There is an additional discussion document published by ChangeMakers et al this year which launched an equity campaign for refugee background students in TEIs. This was aimed at policy makers, institutions, advocates and community groups interested in promoting the interest of RBS to access tertiary education and participate on an equal footing with other NZers. A key aim was to raise awareness of the current difficulties faced by RBS in TEIs such as their background, barriers to education, academic achievement and institutional systems. To fulfil their potential & settle into NZ we argue for a government mandate to recognize RBS as an equity group.
"
Keywords: New Zealand English; Māori Vernacular English; address terms; corpus-based; interactional sociolinguistics; communities of practice; solidarity; compliments; directives; familiarisers.
Books/Theses by Nick Wilson
Using the concepts of front and back stage (Goffman 1959; Richards 2006) to describe different conceptual spaces in which interactions occur, this thesis suggests that discourse in the rugby team is a spatialised practice; the performance of a particular style of leadership constructs the space in which it takes place as public or private, with each contributing to an effective leadership performance. The construction of leadership identity is analysed in terms of stance and indexicality, linking locally constructed identities and discourse strategies to macro identity categories and socio-cultural ideologies. One of the ways in which this is examined is through the role of ritual and formulaic language in the team, showing that while communicative practice is negotiated in the back stage, in the front stage its performance serves to construct team identity while aiming to motivate the players. Furthermore, the structural nature of the game of rugby (i.e. players’ positional requirements) is examined in relation to the different communicative strategies adopted by positionally segregated groups. It is suggested that these groups, although institutionally defined, create meaning for themselves as CofPs by negotiating a shared way of communicating in enacting their role in the team.
In sum, this research uses CofP theory to examine how leaders emerge through their linguistic practices. Furthermore, it locates leadership as a spatialised practice and examines how leaders influence the discursive construction of group identity. Finally, the analysis also makes a valuable contribution to the field of sociolinguistic research on sport, a small yet growing area.
Talks by Nick Wilson
In research on the different levels of offensiveness of swear words, “fucking” is consistently rated as a highly offensive word (Gray 1993; Office of Film and Literature Classification New Zealand and UMR Research Limited 2007). Aside from its literal meaning, “fucking” can be used idiomatically, in phrases such as “quit fucking around”, but its most common use is as an emphatic intensifier (McEnery and Xiao 2004). Furthermore, it is the most emphatic intensifier that can be used (Geurts 2007: 211) and it can intensify virtually every class of word.
An analysis of word frequency indicates that “fucking” is the most frequent word uttered in the pre-match huddle. In addition, it most commonly clusters with “we”. This paper first describes how “fucking” patterns in the corpus of rugby team language and then analyses extracts drawn from pre-match huddles to exemplify the way in which “fucking” is used to engender solidarity amongst the team.
References
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Daly, Nicola, Janet Holmes, Jonathan Newton, and Maria Stubbe. 2004. “Expletives as solidarity signals in FTAs on the factory floor.” Journal of Pragmatics, 36: 945-964.
Geurts, B. 2007. “Really fucking brilliant.” Theoretical Linguistics, 33: 209–214.
Gray, Piers. 1993. “Oaths and laughter and indecent speech.” Language and Communication, 13: 311-325.
Holmes, Janet. 2001. “A corpus-based view of gender in New Zealand English'.” In Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Bussmann (eds.), Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men (Vol. 1). 115–36.
McEnery, Anthony, and Zhonghua Xiao. 2004. “Swearing in Modern British English: the case of fuck in the BNC.” Language and Literature, 13: 235-268.
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 1994. “Sounds pretty ethnic, eh?: a pragmatic particle in New Zealand English.” Language in Society, 23: 367-388.
Office of Film and Literature Classification New Zealand, and UMR Research Limited. 2007. Public Perceptions of Highly Offensive Language. Wellington [N.Z.]: Office of Film and Literature Classification.
The choice of 'we', as opposed to 'you' or 'I', can have significant effects upon the way in which a leader is perceived by followers (Fiol et al. 1999; Holmes 2005; Lord and Brown 2004). Through the strategic use of different pronouns leaders can include or exclude themselves from the group that they lead, thus enabling them to motivate, discipline or command their followers as necessary. Drawing upon my ongoing ethnographic research into discursive leadership behaviour in male rugby teams, this paper uses extracts from a specific discourse event that routinely occurs within a team – the pre-match team meeting - to examine how a rugby coach at different points in the interaction includes himself in, and excludes himself from, the team through his choice of different pronouns thus juxtaposing solidarity with authority. I show how he continually shifts his alignment either towards or away from the team and dynamically recreates his identity from moment to moment. I also discuss what the coach achieves by this strategy, and consider what other factors may be involved in his choice of personal pronouns.
References
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7: 585-614.
Fiol, C. M, D. Harris, and R. House. 1999. Charismatic leadership strategies for effecting social change. The Leadership Quarterly, 10: 449–482.
Gumperz, John J. 1999. On Interactional Sociolinguistic Method. In Srikant Sarangi and Celia Roberts (eds.) Talk, Work and Institutional Order:Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 454-471.
Holmes, Janet. 2005. Leadership talk: How do leaders 'do mentoring', and is gender relevant? Journal of Pragmatics, 37: 1779-1800.
Lord, Robert George, and Douglas J. Brown. 2004. Leadership processes and follower self-identity. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Context of the report
There are a number of phases to this study, only the first two of which are covered in our report:
National survey of students about the impact of the withdrawal of study grants.
Follow up interview with a sample of students to compare what they said they would study and what they actually did in 2011.
Audit of TEI websites (subject of separate report) (refer to preliminary findings from Kindon et al)
Interviews with ESOL professionals in TEIs (subject of separate report: forthcoming).
Participatory workshops with RBS about their study experiences in TEIs (subject of separate report: forthcoming)
There is an additional discussion document published by ChangeMakers et al this year which launched an equity campaign for refugee background students in TEIs. This was aimed at policy makers, institutions, advocates and community groups interested in promoting the interest of RBS to access tertiary education and participate on an equal footing with other NZers. A key aim was to raise awareness of the current difficulties faced by RBS in TEIs such as their background, barriers to education, academic achievement and institutional systems. To fulfil their potential & settle into NZ we argue for a government mandate to recognize RBS as an equity group.
"
Keywords: New Zealand English; Māori Vernacular English; address terms; corpus-based; interactional sociolinguistics; communities of practice; solidarity; compliments; directives; familiarisers.
Using the concepts of front and back stage (Goffman 1959; Richards 2006) to describe different conceptual spaces in which interactions occur, this thesis suggests that discourse in the rugby team is a spatialised practice; the performance of a particular style of leadership constructs the space in which it takes place as public or private, with each contributing to an effective leadership performance. The construction of leadership identity is analysed in terms of stance and indexicality, linking locally constructed identities and discourse strategies to macro identity categories and socio-cultural ideologies. One of the ways in which this is examined is through the role of ritual and formulaic language in the team, showing that while communicative practice is negotiated in the back stage, in the front stage its performance serves to construct team identity while aiming to motivate the players. Furthermore, the structural nature of the game of rugby (i.e. players’ positional requirements) is examined in relation to the different communicative strategies adopted by positionally segregated groups. It is suggested that these groups, although institutionally defined, create meaning for themselves as CofPs by negotiating a shared way of communicating in enacting their role in the team.
In sum, this research uses CofP theory to examine how leaders emerge through their linguistic practices. Furthermore, it locates leadership as a spatialised practice and examines how leaders influence the discursive construction of group identity. Finally, the analysis also makes a valuable contribution to the field of sociolinguistic research on sport, a small yet growing area.
In research on the different levels of offensiveness of swear words, “fucking” is consistently rated as a highly offensive word (Gray 1993; Office of Film and Literature Classification New Zealand and UMR Research Limited 2007). Aside from its literal meaning, “fucking” can be used idiomatically, in phrases such as “quit fucking around”, but its most common use is as an emphatic intensifier (McEnery and Xiao 2004). Furthermore, it is the most emphatic intensifier that can be used (Geurts 2007: 211) and it can intensify virtually every class of word.
An analysis of word frequency indicates that “fucking” is the most frequent word uttered in the pre-match huddle. In addition, it most commonly clusters with “we”. This paper first describes how “fucking” patterns in the corpus of rugby team language and then analyses extracts drawn from pre-match huddles to exemplify the way in which “fucking” is used to engender solidarity amongst the team.
References
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Daly, Nicola, Janet Holmes, Jonathan Newton, and Maria Stubbe. 2004. “Expletives as solidarity signals in FTAs on the factory floor.” Journal of Pragmatics, 36: 945-964.
Geurts, B. 2007. “Really fucking brilliant.” Theoretical Linguistics, 33: 209–214.
Gray, Piers. 1993. “Oaths and laughter and indecent speech.” Language and Communication, 13: 311-325.
Holmes, Janet. 2001. “A corpus-based view of gender in New Zealand English'.” In Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Bussmann (eds.), Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men (Vol. 1). 115–36.
McEnery, Anthony, and Zhonghua Xiao. 2004. “Swearing in Modern British English: the case of fuck in the BNC.” Language and Literature, 13: 235-268.
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 1994. “Sounds pretty ethnic, eh?: a pragmatic particle in New Zealand English.” Language in Society, 23: 367-388.
Office of Film and Literature Classification New Zealand, and UMR Research Limited. 2007. Public Perceptions of Highly Offensive Language. Wellington [N.Z.]: Office of Film and Literature Classification.
The choice of 'we', as opposed to 'you' or 'I', can have significant effects upon the way in which a leader is perceived by followers (Fiol et al. 1999; Holmes 2005; Lord and Brown 2004). Through the strategic use of different pronouns leaders can include or exclude themselves from the group that they lead, thus enabling them to motivate, discipline or command their followers as necessary. Drawing upon my ongoing ethnographic research into discursive leadership behaviour in male rugby teams, this paper uses extracts from a specific discourse event that routinely occurs within a team – the pre-match team meeting - to examine how a rugby coach at different points in the interaction includes himself in, and excludes himself from, the team through his choice of different pronouns thus juxtaposing solidarity with authority. I show how he continually shifts his alignment either towards or away from the team and dynamically recreates his identity from moment to moment. I also discuss what the coach achieves by this strategy, and consider what other factors may be involved in his choice of personal pronouns.
References
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7: 585-614.
Fiol, C. M, D. Harris, and R. House. 1999. Charismatic leadership strategies for effecting social change. The Leadership Quarterly, 10: 449–482.
Gumperz, John J. 1999. On Interactional Sociolinguistic Method. In Srikant Sarangi and Celia Roberts (eds.) Talk, Work and Institutional Order:Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 454-471.
Holmes, Janet. 2005. Leadership talk: How do leaders 'do mentoring', and is gender relevant? Journal of Pragmatics, 37: 1779-1800.
Lord, Robert George, and Douglas J. Brown. 2004. Leadership processes and follower self-identity. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.