Eivind Nessa Torgersen
Eivind Nessa Torgersen
Professor of English language, Head of English and Foreign Languages
Department of Teacher Education Faculty of Social and Educational SciencesBackground and activities
Research overview
Most of my research deals with phonological and grammatical variation in London, focussing on variation and change in vowel systems. I was a senior research associate at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom (2004-2010) working on the Economic and Social Research Council-funded projects Multicultural London English: the emergence, acquisition and diffusion of a new variety and Linguistic Innovators: The English of adolescents in London. I have also worked on variation in speech rhythm and voice quality, and I was the principal investigator on on a study on indefinite articles and pragmatic markers in London English funded by the British Academy (Analysis of London English using corpus tools, 2008).
Other research interests are in experimental phonetics and speech processing, especially models for word recognition. My PhD (Temporal and semantic factors in perception of the voicing contrast: Processing strategies in L1 and L2, University of Reading, 2004) was a psycholinguistic study on speech processing strategies in second language learners and native speakers of English. In particular it examined how language learners use phonetic and semantic information very early in time after the information was received.
Over the last few years I have been working on acquisition of English in multilingual classrooms in Norway and have held funded projects in this area.
Research grants
Acquisition of English in the multilingual classroom (with Anna Krulatz); The Research Council of Norway, 2018-2022
Increasing teacher awareness about the positive impact of multilingualism on the acquisition of English (with Anna Krulatz); Sør-Trøndelag University College, 2015
Multilingualism in Trondheim public schools: Raising teacher awareness in the English as a Foreign Language classroom (with Anna Krulatz and Anne Dahl); The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2014
Analysis of London English using corpus tools; The British Academy, 2008
Current teaching and supervision
I supervise Dianna Walla who is a PhD student working on the project Acquisition of English in the Multilingual Classroom.
I am a Visiting Professor at Nord University where I teach phonetics and co-supervise a PhD student, Tone Stuler Myhre.
orcid.org/0000-0001-9370-7416Scientific, academic and artistic work
Displaying a selection of activities. See all publications in the database
Journal publications
- (2021) Embracing linguistic and cultural diversity in multilingual EAL classrooms: The impact of professional development on teacher beliefs and practice. Teaching and Teacher Education : An International Journal of Research and Studies. vol. 105.
- (2020) Forord. Målbryting. vol. 11.
- (2019) Målbryting er tilbake! Og korfor publisere om sosiolingvistikk på norsk?. Målbryting. vol. 10.
- (2019) A re-analysis of f0 in ethnic varieties of London English using REAPER. Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
- (2018) Prosodic rhythm, cultural background, and interaction in adolescent urban vernaculars in Paris: Case studies and comparisons. Journal of French Language Studies. vol. 28 (2).
- (2018) Towards critical cultural and linguistic awareness in language classrooms in Norway: Fostering respect for diversity through identity texts. Language Teaching Research. vol. 22 (5).
- (2015) An acoustic analysis of voice quality in London English: The effect of gender, ethnicity and f0. Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
- (2014) The Effects of Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency on Communicative Adequacy in Oral Task Performance. Applied Linguistics. vol. 37 (6).
- (2013) Language contact and language change in the multicultural metropolis. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée. vol. 18 (2).
- (2012) An investigation of speech rhythm in London English. Lingua. vol. 122 (7).
- (2011) Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics. vol. 15 (2).
- (2011) A corpus-based study of pragmatic markers in London English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. vol. 7 (1).
- (2011) A study of rhythm in London: Is syllable-timing a feature of Multicultural London English?. The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. vol. 17 (2).
- (2010) A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of indefinite article forms in London English. Journal of English Linguistics. vol. 38 (4).
- (2008) Ethnicity, friendship network and social practices as the motor of dialect change: Linguistic innovation in London. Sociolinguistica : Internationales Jahrbuch fuer Europaeische Soziolinguistik. vol. 22.
- (2008) Reversing ‘drift’: Innovation and diffusion in the London diphthong system. Language Variation and Change. vol. 20 (3).
- (2004) Internal and external motivation in phonetic change: Dialect levelling outcomes for an English vowel shift. Journal of Sociolinguistics. vol. 8 (1).
Books
- (2015) Language Variation - European Perspectives V : Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 7), Trondheim, June 2013. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2015. ISBN 9789027234971. Studies in Language Variation (17).
Part of book/report
- (2022) Teaching English in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms in Norway: Teachers' Beliefs, Practices, and Needs in Multilingual Education. Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Teaching Foreign Languages in Multilingual Settings: Pedagogical Implications.
- (2021) Tracing the origins of an urban youth vernacular: founder effects, frequency and culture in the emergence of Multicultural London English. Advancing Socio-grammatical Variation and Change - In Honour of Jenny Cheshire.
- (2021) Language and Street Culture in the Big City. Routledge Handbook of Street Culture.
- (2018) The Role of English as a Foreign Language in Educating Refugees in Norway. Educating Refugee-background Students: Critical Issues and Dynamic Contexts.
- (2018) The effects of task type and L2 proficiency on discourse appropriacy in oral task performance. Task-Based Approaches to Teaching and Assessing Pragmatics.
- (2018) Language change and innovation in London: Multicultural London English. Sociolinguistics in England.
- (2018) Teaching pronunciation. Teaching and Learning English.
- (2018) A corpus-based analysis of the pragmatic marker you get me. Studies in Corpus-Based Sociolinguistics.
- (2017) Lingvistiske og sosiale fordeler av flerspråklighet - Fra forskning til pedagogisk praksis innenfor engelskfaget. Mangfold gjennom anerkjennelse og inkludering i skolen.
- (2016) London’s Cockney in the twentieth century: stability or cycles of contact-driven change?. Listening to the Past - Audio records of Accents of English.
- (2016) The Role of the EFL Classroom in Maintaining Multilingual Identities - Issues and Considerations in Sør-Trøndelag Public Schools. Critical Views on Teaching and Learning English Around the Globe Qualitative Research Approaches.
- (2013) English as a contact language: the role of children and adolescents. English as a Contact Language.
- (2012) A perceptual study of ethnicity and geographical location in London and Birmingham. Dialectological and folk dialectological concepts of space.
- (2011) The emergence and diffusion of Multicultural English. Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas.