Research activities within the the Modern Languages, Linguistics and Society theme range from sign language to sociolinguistics. The Team is working internationally to develop our understanding of the structure of spoken and signed languages, and the language used within cultural, social, political, institutional and forensic contexts. Consistently one of the Universitys strongest areas of research, the Modern Languages, Linguistics and Society theme contains international and world-leading researchers working collaboratively across disciplines in the areas of: Sign language linguistics, Corpus linguistics, Forensic linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Critical digital pedagogy and computer-assisted language learning, Language teacher training, Interpreting and translation, Cultural identity and thought as expressed through world cinema and literature, Language-based area studies (e.g., Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish)