Dr Lourdes Burbano-Elizondo
Senior Lecturer - English Language
In 2006 I joined the Department of English and History as a Lecturer in English Language. Before coming to Edge Hill, I worked as a part-time tutor at the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield, where I completed my PhD in 2008.
I gained my first degree in English Philology, specialising in linguistics, at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in 1999. Having graduated, I decided to come over to the UK to work as a foreign language assistant in two secondary schools in Sunderland and, at the same time, do my MLitt in Linguistics at Newcastle University. In doing this, my intention was primarily to improve my spoken English and gain a bit of teaching experience before taking the teaching exams to become an English secondary-school teacher in Spain. My teaching and research experience in the North-east of England, however, changed my mind about pursuing a teaching career in Spain, which I had wanted to do ever since I had started learning English in primary school. In spite of having studied English in Spain for 13 years, the local Sunderland dialect was nothing like the English I had learnt. For the first time, I was experiencing “real English”. As a result, I became very interested in language variation in the UK and, in particular, in the North East of England. Consequently, for my MLitt dissertation, entitled ‘Lexical Erosion and Lexical Innovation in Tyne and Wear’ (2001), I did a small study to identify variation in the use of local vocabulary by Sunderland and Newcastle secondary-school children. In particular, I investigated their active knowledge of local vocabulary and their passive knowledge of traditional dialect words that were falling out of use in the region.
My doctoral dissertation, ‘Language Variation and Identity in Sunderland’, continued the exploration of language differentiation in North-eastern English varieties, but with a principal focus on the dialect of Sunderland. In this study, a corpus of data, collected using the Survey of Regional English methodology, was analysed with the intention of identifying some of the variety’s distinctive features; also, I explored how regional language variation and language usage are imbued with local ideologies in order to construct local social identities.
Currently, I am working with Prof. Joan Beal (University of Sheffield) and Dr. Carmen Llamas (University of York) on the preparation of a book titled English from Tyne to Tees: Urban Varieties of the North-east of England. This volume will focus mainly on the urban varieties of the major conurbations of North-east England: Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside.
Research
- Sociolinguistics
- Language variation and change (particularly in North East England)
- Language and identity
Publications
- Beal, J.C, Burbano-Elizondo, L and Llamas, C (in preparation) English from Tyne to Tees: Urban Varieties of the North-east of England. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Burbano-Elizondo, L. (2006) “Regional variation and identity in Sunderland”. In White, G. and Omoniyi, T. (eds) The Sociolinguistics of Identity. London: Continuum. pp. 113-128.
- Asprey, E., L. Burbano-Elizondo and K. Wallace (2006) ‘The Survey of Regional English and its Methodology: Conception, Refinement and Implementation’. In Hornero, A. M., Luzón, M. J. and Murillo, S. (eds) Corpus Linguistics: Applications for the Study of English. (Linguistics Insights. Studies in Language and Communication. Volume 25) Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 431-449.
- Burbano-Elizondo, L. (2003) ‘Mackem: the Urban dialect of Sunderland’. Deligianni, E. and Goglia, F. (eds.) Papers in Linguistics from the University of Manchester proceedings of the 12th Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, March 2003.University of Manchester: pp. 15-28
- Burbano Elizondo, L. (2003) ‘First approaches to the unexplored dialect of Sunderland’. Miscelánea 27: 51-68.
Conference Papers and Other Talks
- ‘I’m not a Geordie, I’m not a Mackem, what am I?’ Analysing identity and indexicality in Sunderland”. Paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 16 (SS16), University of Limerick, July 2006. Read more >
- “Motivations for language variation and change in Sunderland”. Paper presented as an invited speaker at the Centre for Linguistic Research Seminar Series, University of Aberdeen, May 2006. Read more >
- ‘The Tyne-Wear Derby’: analysing indexicality and identity in the North-east of England’. Paper presented at the Northern Englishes workshop 1 (NEW 1), University of Lancaster, March 2006. (With Joan Beal, University of Sheffield). Read more >
- “Language variation in north-east England: /h/-dropping in Sunderland”, UK Language Variation and Change 5 (UKLVC 5), University of Aberdeen, September 2005.
- “Mackems do not speak like Geordies: Myth or reality?”: Looking for evidence to confirm this popular belief’. Paper presented at the BAAL/CUP Language and Identity Seminar, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, University of Reading, July 2004. Read more >
- “Mackems do not speak like Geordies: Myth or reality?”: Looking for evidence to confirm this popular belief’. Paper presented at the Identities. Postgraduate conference of the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, June 2004.
- “The Survey of Regional English and its Methodology: Conception, Refinement and Implementation”. Paper presented at the School of English Postgraduate Colloquium of the University of Sheffield, May 2004.
- “The Survey of Regional English: A Corpus for the 21st Century”. Poster presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 15 (SS15), University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, April 2004. (With Esther Asprey and Kate Wallace, University of Leeds). Read more >
- “The Survey of Regional English and its Methodology: Conception, Refinement and Implementation”. Paper presented at the 12th Susanne Hübner Seminar, Department of English and German Philology, University of Zaragoza (Spain), November 2003. (With Esther Asprey and Kate Wallace, University of Leeds).
- “Mackem: the Urban dialect of Sunderland”. Paper presented at the XII Manchester Postgraduate Linguistic Conference, University of Manchester, April 2003.
- “First Approaches to the Unexplored dialect of Sunderland”. Paper presented at the III Triangle Conference, University of Leeds, September 2002.