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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Recent Submissions

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    Taking action for climate change: teaching about, through and for climate literacy in schools
    (Education Matters, 2022) Dolan, Anne
    Climate change caused by global warming is already transforming life on Earth. It is the defining challenge of our time, the most significant issue facing all citizens today. Evidence of climate change is compelling. With heat waves in the US, wildfires in Europe, floods in Asia, and famine in the Horn of Africa, summer 2022 clearly illustrates the reality of climate change. In 2015, 193 countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one of which is climate change (UN General Assembly, 2015). In December 2015, at the Paris Climate Conference – the 21st meeting of the Conference of the Parties, otherwise known as COP21 – 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, global climate deal, officially agreeing to maintain global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. This commitment marks an unprecedented international consensus on the need to transition from fossil fuels within the next few decades. Indeed, the window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all is rapidly closing (IPCC, 2022). To maintain hope and a sense of agency, climate literacy has to be part of the solution to the challenges posed by a warmer Earth. Situated in the fields of Education for Sustainability and Global Citizenship Education, climate literacy is recognised as a core action for addressing climate change. Climate literacy helps students understand and address the impacts of the climate crisis, empowering them with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to act as agents of change.
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    Indicating engagement in online workplace meetings: the role of backchannelling head nods (Pre published)
    (John Benjamins Publishing, 2024) Knight, Dawn; O'Keeffe, Anne; Mark, Geraldine; Fitzgerald, Christopher; McNamara, Justin; Adolphs, Svenja; Cowan, Benjamin; Fahey Palma, Tania; Farr, Fiona; Peraldi, Sandrine
    Amid COVID-19 and the so-called ‘digital pivot’, online virtual communication has been placed at the heart of our daily lives, both professionally and privately. As we move into a post-COVID context, the affordances of the digital turn have shown that we can operate professionally online but there is a need for a better understanding of communication in the online workplace. This paper first contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of indicators of engagement in multi-party communication online, as evidenced by a small-scale but in-depth corpus-based multi-modal study. Second, it showcases the importance of building naturally-occurring spoken corpora that go beyond written transcription of the spoken word and include annotation of non-verbal behaviour. The work pays particular attention to the incidence, frequency, position and function of spoken and head nod backchannels, exploring the coordination/co-occurrence of these features in online talk. Findings point to a changing profile of how engagement is displayed in online workplace meetings and this appears to be linked to the functionality of the platforms.
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    Doing meetings online: understanding variation in virtual workplace meetings
    (John Benjamins Publishing, 2025-12) Peraldi, Sandrine; Fitzgerald, Chris; Mark, Geraldine; McNamara, Justin; Knight, Dawn; O'Keeffe, Anne; Fahey Palma, Tania
    This paper contributes to previous work on workplace registers by presenting an analysis of a corpus of virtual meetings. The Interactional Variation Online corpus is comprised of recordings of virtual meetings from four different organisations. This study describes how each organisation shares similar practices when engaging in virtual meetings and how variation emerges when each organisation is compared to the other three. Corpus results show how, to establish conclusions related to this register, it is necessary to consider the influence of variation across organisations, the chairing style of each meeting, the formality of each organisational culture and the level of participant engagement in each meeting.
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    “We’ve lost you Ian”: multi-modal corpus innovations in capturing, processing and analysing professional online spoken interactions
    (Spanish Association for Corpus Linguistics AELINCO, 2024-02) O'Keeffe, Anne; Farr, Fiona; Fahey Palma, Tania; Cowan, Benjamin; Adolphs, Svenja; McNamara, Justin; Fitzgerald, Christopher; Mark, Geraldine; Knight, Dawn; Peraldi, Sandrine
    Online communication via video platforms has become a standard component of workplace interaction for many businesses and employees. The rapid uptake in the use of virtual meeting platforms due to COVID-19 restrictions meant that many people had to quickly adjust to communication via this medium without much (if any) training as to how workplace communication is successfully facilitated on these platforms. The Interactional Variation Online project aims to analyse a corpus of virtual meetings to gain a multi-modal understanding of this context of language use. This paper describes one component of the project, namely guidelines that can be replicated when constructing a corpus of multi-modal data derived from recordings of online meetings. A further aim is to determine typical features of virtual meetings in comparison to face-to-face meetings so as to inform good practice in virtual workplace interactions. By looking at how non-verbal behaviour, such as head movements, gaze, posture, and spoken discourse interact in this medium, we both undertake a holistic analysis of interaction in virtual meetings and produce a template for the development of multi-modal corpora for future analysis.
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    Caint na ndaoine in action in Gaeltacht na ndéise: code-mixing, code-switching or translanguaging?
    (Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 2025-12) Breathnach, Caitríona; O'Keeffe, Anne; Ó Laoire, Muiris
    Code-mixing, code-switching and latterly translanguaging are concepts that are well-researched in the concept of bilingual communities, especially from a sociolinguistics perspective. This paper explores a corpus of interviews from speakers living in Gaeltacht na nDéise, in the South-East of Ireland. The data, in both Irish and English, was originally part of a mixed methods study that included a largescale community study of 497 households. Using a corpus linguistics methodology, we coded all instances of language change and analysed them systematically. Using a bottom-up approach, we explore whether current concepts of code-mixing, code-switching or translanguaging can help explain the data. Our results show, across the data, instances of code-mixing, code-switching and translanguaging occurring across both parts-of-speech, discourse items and within utterances. We note a prevalence of nouns in the English interviews and pragmatic markers in the Irish interviews, and to a lesser degree, adjectives and quotatives, as sites where language pivots appear to be more likely. In this study code-mixing, switching and translanguaging are brought together to illuminate our data and each offers a perspective that helps is better conceptualise how language is being used. Is coincheapa iad an códmheascadh, an códmhalartú agus an trasteangú atá saothraithe go maith sa taighde ar an bpobal dátheangach, go háirithe ó pheirspictíocht na sochtheangeolaíochta de. Déanann an t-alt taighde seo iniúchadh ar chorpas agallamh le cainteoirí a chónaíonn i nGaeltacht na nDéise, in Oirdheisceart na hÉireann. Ba chuid de staidéar modhanna measctha ó thosach a bhí sna sonraí seo, idir Bhéarla agus Ghaeilge a chuimsigh staidéar pobail ar 497 teaghlach. Ag baint úsáid as modheolaíocht teangeolaíochta corpais, códaíodh gach cás den athrú teanga agus rinneadh anailís chórasach air. Ag baint úsáid as cur chuige ón ithir aníos, féachtar le míniú a sholáthar ar na sonraí, féachaint an é an códmheascadh, an códmhalartú nó an trasteangú atá i gceist. Léiríonn na sonraí i gcoitinne go bhfuil ann don chódmheascadh, an códmhalartú agus an trasteangú i gcodanna cainte, i míreanna dioscúrsa agus laistigh de ráitis. Tugtar faoi deara go bhfuil ainmfhocail le sonrú sna hagallaimh Bhéarla agus marcóirí pragmatacha sna hagallaimh Ghaeilge, agus go pointe áirithe, feidhmíonn aidiachtaí agus athfhriotail chomh maith mar shuíomhanna ina n-athraíonn an teanga. Sa staidéar seo, tugtar códmhalartú, códmheascadh agus trasteangú le chéile chun ár sonraí a shoiléiriú agus cuireann gach ceann acu faoi leith peirspictíocht ar fáil a chabhraíonn linn coincheapú níos fearr a dhéanamh ar an gcaoi a bhfuil an teanga á húsáid sa phobal.