Professor Susan M. FitzmauriceBA(Hons) Rhodes University
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Overview
Susan Fitzmaurice is Professor of English Language and Head of the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield.
Fitzmaurice was previously at Northern Arizona University where she was Professor of English and Head of Department, and then Dean of the College of Arts and Letters until December 2005. From 1987 to 1995, she was University Lecturer in English and Fellow of St. Catharine´s College, Cambridge, and from 1984 to 1986, she was Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Cape Town.
She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics and of the Cambridge University Press Studies in English Language series. She is also a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.
Research
Fitzmaurice's research focuses on the history of the English language, using methodological perspectives provided by historical pragmatics and historical sociolinguistics. She is particularly interested in exploring the methods and kinds of evidence employed in historical approaches to language study.
Her research on English in the eighteenth century utilizes the frameworks of social networks analysis, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis. Her data are drawn principally from the Network of Eighteenth century English texts (NEET). This is a large unconventional historical electronic corpus of letters, fiction, prose drama and essays produced by Joseph Addison and the members of his social milieu.
Fitzmaurice is currently investigating on the history of the English language in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. The first publication in the project on the history and structure of the colonial variety, ' L1Rhodesian English', appears in The Lesser-Known Varieties of English, (eds.) Daniel Schreier, Peter Trudgill, Edgar W. Schneider, & Jeffrey P. Williams. Cambridge University Press (2010), pp. 263-285.She has contributed a chapter on White Zimbabwean English (WhZimE) to the forthcoming World Atlas of Varieties of English (WAVE), edited by Bernd Kortmann and his associates. She has also recently published a study of the language in the Zimbabwe diaspora in eVarieng (http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/07/fitzmaurice/)
She recently received British Academy support to investigate undocumented varieties of spoken English in Zimbabwe and is collaborating with scholars and students at the University of Zimbabwe on this strand of the larger Zimbabwe project.
Teaching
Fitzmaurice offers research training as part of the historical and social approaches pathway in the MA in English Language Studies. This programme provides research training and advanced instruction in a range of topics and research approaches including historical sociolinguistics, language variation and social theory, language reform, talk-in-interaction, dialectology, and language reform. Students are introduced to and trained in hands-on research techniques, including corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, for the investigation of real world language problems. They also have the opportunity to gain important career skills during placements in local businesses and cultural organizations as part of their degree course.
Research Supervision
Fitzmaurice supervises a number of doctoral projects on a range of topics including Global Englishes, metaphor and conflict in English and French newspapers, pragmatics and conversation analysis, historical discourse analysis, and cross-cultural discourse analysis.
She welcomes research students who are interested in the English language and the histories of English varieties, and who wish to pursue study in historical sociolinguistics, historical corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, historical discourse analysis, and the history of the English language.
Selected Publications
Books
- Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of English Language Change. (Eds.) Susan Fitzmaurice & Donka Minkova. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008.
- Methods in Historical Pragmatics. (Eds.) Susan Fitzmaurice & Irma Taavitsainen. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2007.
- Business and Official Correspondence: Historical Investigations. (Eds.) Marina Dossena & Susan M. Fitzmaurice. Linguistic Insights Series. Bern: Peter Lang. 2006.
- Variation and Varieties of Language: Corpus Approaches. (Eds.) Randi Reppen, Susan Fitzmaurice & Douglas Biber. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2002.
- The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English: A pragmatic approach. John Benjamins Publishers (Pragmatics & Beyond series vol. 95. 2002
Selected Recent Articles
- • Sociability: Conversation and the Performance of Friendship in early eighteenth century letters. In Ulrich Busse & Axel Hübler (eds.) The Meta-communicative Lexicon of English Now and Then: A Historical Pragmatics Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2012. Pp. 21-43.
- Talking politics across transnational space: researching linguistic practices in the Zimbabwe Diaspora. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English Volume 7: How to Deal with Data: Problems and Approaches to the Investigation of the English Language over Time and Space http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/07/fitzmaurice/ October 2011
- The sociopragmatics of a lovers spat: the case of the eighteenth-century courtship letters of Mary Pierrepont and Edward Wortley. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 10(2) 2009: 215-237. Reprinted in Jonathan Culpeper (ed.) Historical Sociopragmatics. John Benjamins. 2011, pp. 37-59.
- Poetic collaboration and competition in the late seventeenth century: George Stepney’s letters to Jacob Tonson and Matthew Prior. In P. Pahta & A. Jucker (eds.)Communicating Early English Manuscripts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2011, pp. 118-132.
- Coalitions, networks, and discourse communities in Augustan England: The Spectator and the early eighteenth-century essay. In Raymond Hickey (ed.) Eighteenth-Century English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 106-132.
- Changes in the meanings of politeness in eighteenth-century England: discourse analysis and historical evidence. In J. Culpeper & D. Kadar (eds.) Historical (Im)politeness. Bern: Peter Lang. 2010, pp. 87-115.
- Mr. Spectator, identity and social roles in an early eighteenth-century community of practice and the periodical discourse community. In Paivi Pahta, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi & Minna Palander-Collin (eds.) (eds.)Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010, pp. 29-53.
- Epistolary Identity: Convention and Idiosyncrasy in Late Modern English Letters. In Marina Dossena & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.) Studies in Late Modern English Correspondence. Bern: Peter Lang. 2008, pp. 77-112.
- Questions of standardization and representativeness in the development of social networks based corpora: the story of the Network of Eighteenth-century English Texts. In J.C. Beal, K. Corrigan, H. Moisl (eds.) Creating and Digitizing Unconventional Corpora. Volume 2: Diachronic Corpora. London: Palgrave. 2007
- Diplomatic Business: Information, power, and Persuasion in Late Modern English diplomatic correspondence. In Marina Dossena & Susan Fitzmaurice (eds.) Business and Official Correspondence: Historical Investigations. Bern: Peter Lang. 2006. Pp. 77-106.
- Testing the effects of regional, ethnic, and international dialects of English on listening comprehension, second author, with Roy Major, Ferenc Bunta, Chandrika Rogers,Language Learning 55:1, March 2005, 39-72.
- ‘Orality, standardization, and the effects of print publication on the look of Standard English in the eighteenth century’. In Marina Dossena & Roger Lass (eds.) Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology. Bern: Peter Lang. 2004. Pp. 351-383.
- Politeness and modal meaning in the construction of humiliative discourse in an early eighteenth-century network of patron-client relationships. English Language and Linguistics 2002. 6.2: 239-265. Reprinted in Corpus Linguistics: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (eds. Ramesh Krishnamurthy & Wolfgang Teubert. 2007.