Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Professor of English Linguistics
Research
My research interests are in the fields of Cognitive Linguistics, corpus linguistics, experimental psycholinguistics, and second language teaching and learning. I am especially interested in metaphor, and in the relationship between spatial language, bodily experience and cognition.
In a Cognitive Linguistic view, metaphors are defined as understanding one kind of experience in terms of another kind of experience. They are fundamental to our understanding of (typically) abstract concepts in terms of (typically) more concrete types of experience and pervasive in both thought and language (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; 1999). One strand of my metaphor research concerns the relationship between metaphorical language and embodied cognition. I have focussed on how technological inventions and discoveries have helped people structure language and thought in metaphorical ways (Johansson Falck 2005), and on the ways in which people's experiences of real world artifacts such as paths, roads, ways, bridges, tunnels, and towers have influenced the usage patterns of metaphorical and non-metaphorical language (e.g. Johansson Falck 2010, 2012, 2013, Johansson Falck and Gibbs 2012). My research into the usage patterns of the English prepositions in and on, and their Swedish equivalents i and på focusses on how points in TIME are construed in both English and Swedish (Johansson Falck, 2016). Johansson Falck (2017) deals with the usage patterns of abstract instances of the prepositions in and on.
Cognitive Linguistic approaches to language teaching and learning language are based on the premises that language is a not an autonomous module in the mind, that people's knowledge of language derive from language use, and that language derives from people's interaction with the physical world (Littlemore and Juchem-Grundmann, 2010:1). Moreover, the cognitive processes that guide the learning and processing of a new language are considered to be the same "as those involved in the learning and processing of information more generally (Littlemore and Juchem-Grundman 2010: 1). Some of these processes involve how speakers construe their experiences of the world, how they divide their knowledge of the world into categories, how they understand new phenomena in terms of old, and how they use one thing to refer to another closely related thing. CL adds important information to the field of language teaching and learning by describing processes such as these in detail (see Littlemore and Juchem-Grundmann 2010, 2-5).
My research project (2010-2014) Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Second Language Teaching: A case study of the English prepositions in, at, and on (funded by The Swedish Academy and The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities) focuses on the usage patterns of Swedish and English prepositions, and on applying insights gained from these analyses to the teaching and learning of English prepositions. For instance, my corpus linguistic analyses of abstract instances of the prepositions in and on from the British National corpus (BNC) (Johansson Falck 2017) show that these fall into categories of related concepts that are systematically related to specific types of body-world knowledge. Some types of abstract concepts are consistently construed as containers (used with in), and others as supporting surfaces (used with on). Subsequent interventions with twelve and thirteen- year-old Swedish L2 learners (Johansson Falck, under review), in turn, show that discussions about the embodied motivations for categories such as these are useful starting points for learning the patterns of abstract in and on in a playful, creative and collaborative way. The learners' self-reports suggest that the approach has positive effects on learning.
I received my Ph.D in English Linguistics from Luleå University of Technology in 2005. My thesis deals with how important inventions and discoveries have helped people to structure language and thought in metaphorical ways.
I was a post-doctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) (funded by the Swedish Research Council) 2008- 2010 . There I conducted research on vocal iconic gestures, and on embodied motivations for motion metaphors combining corpus linguistic and experimental methods.
Research visits
2008-2010: Postdoctoral fellow, Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), USA.
March 1-April 31, 2014: Visiting scholar, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.
July 21-December 21, 2014 : Visiting scholar, Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), USA.
Other
Associate Editor of 2020-
Co-chair (with ) of . 2018-2022.
Member (President) of the Governing Board of the 2017-2019. Member (Treasurer) of the Governing Board of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition (SALC) 2013-2017.
Member (Secretary) of the Governing Board of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition (SALC) 2011-2013.
Associate Editor of . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012-2014.
Associate Editor for the Public Journal of Semiotics (PJOS). 2015-2017.
Member of the research network . (2017-)
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Teaching and supervision
I teach linguistics courses and supervise essays at various levels. I am supervisor for PhD candidates Yulia Kashevarova (main supervisor) and Quijun Zhang (co-supervisor). Previous supervision: and (co-supervisor), Daniel Kjellander () and Kajsa Törmä () (main supervisor).
I was appointed recognised university teacher at Umeå University in 2020.
Previous teaching and supervision
Luleå University of Technology (1998-2003), and Stockholm University (Jan 2006- Dec 2007).