Edinburgh TESOL and Applied Language (ETAL) research group Spring seminar series.

Dr Bróna Murphy and Dr Farah Akbar (University of Edinburgh) will present on British Converts to Islam: Constructing (New) Identities.

Abstract: 

Few studies explore the impact conversion to Islam has on a Western individual's social identity (Younis and Hasan 2017). With a growing number of converts to Islam being reported on a daily basis in the West, this study explores the discourse around conversion and social and religious identity in a British context. Using a Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis (CADA), we look at a small group of Western converts who find themselves at a cross-section between the growing xenophobia towards Muslim migrants, on the one hand, and the representation of Islam that is free from ethnic baggage on the other (see Wohlrab-Sahr 1999; Younis and Hasan 2017). Our talk uncovers emerging discourses around the process of conversion and social identity and explores the impact of this position on the construction and (re)negotiation of social and religious identities.  

Bio:

Farah Akbar joined the MSc TESOL team in January 2015. Previously, she taught at University of Southampton after having completed her PhD in Linguistics from University of Essex. She has more than 15 years’ experience teaching ESL and EFL at higher education institutions in Malaysia, USA, England and Scotland.  Her research interests are in the areas of descriptive linguistics especially within the LFG and GL frameworks. She is also passionate about language teaching especially in the evaluation of ELT materials. More recently she has been engaged with projects on assessment literacy and issues on conversions and identity. 

Bróna Murphy is a Lecturer in Language Education at the University of Edinburgh and Co-ordinator of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Corpus Linguistics SIG. Her principal research areas span corpus linguistics, spoken discourse, and sociolinguistics. Her work involves looking at small, specialised sociolinguistic-oriented corpora to explore functionally-motivated linguistic variation across social groups. She has published her work in a monograph (2010), in chapters and in journals such the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Corpora, Classroom Discourse and Pragmatics and Society.