Profile

I am interested in languages as a window into cognition, emotion and culture and as a barometer of social discourse and societal change. Therefore, my research focus is not linguistic structure and meaning per se, but the conceptual significance, psychological grounding and sociocultural ramifications of language as a tool of communication and a transmitter of culture. 

Education: BA - Peking University; MAs - Peking University, UCLA; PhD in General Linguistics - University of Cologne, Germany

Areas of Research:

Sociolinguistics: popular and political discourse, language and gender, new media in contemporary China

Cognitive Linguistics: Emotion and language, metaphor, categorization and conceptualization

Linguistic pragmatics: Grammar, meaning, language use, and pragmatically driven language change

Applied Linguistics: Chinese second language acquisition and pedagogy, second language identity development

More information on the UO Chinese Flagship Program