University of London, Birkbeck College

Faculty Member, Applied Linguistics & Communication

Chair of Dpartment

Birkbeck College

Thesis Title: Language Choice and Language Shift in the Tyneside Chinese Community

About

Li Wei’s main research interests are in bilingualism (including bilingual education) and intercultural pragmatics.

Between 1988 and 2000, he was involved in three consecutive ESRC-funded research projects on language maintenance and choice in the Chinese community in Tyneside in the North East of England. More recently (2006-8), he has been working on another ESRC-funded project on multilingual practices of complementary schools in England (RES-000-23-1180), with Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge at Birmingham, Peter Martin at University of East London and Vally Lytra at King’s College, London). He has also been involved in a number of other research projects on grammatical profiling of normally developing and speech disordered young English-speaking children (Nuffield Foundation) and reliability of identification and referral of speech and communication disorders in young non-standard or non-native English-speaking children (ESRC). His main contribution to bilingualism research includes developing a Common Sense Explanation of conversational code-switching and applications of social network analysis in studies of bilingual choice and bilingual development.

Li Wei’s interests in intercultural pragmatics focus on the ethno-etymological approach to core cultural values, the concept of "self" and communicative strategies in different cultures and the application of Conversation Analysis to intercultural and cross-lingual professional communication.

Li Wei has supervised a number of PhD students on topics ranging from EFL learners' listening strategies to lexical selection in speech production. But the majority of his previous supervisees worked in areas of bilingualism and intercultural pragmatics.

Li Wei founded the International Symposia on Bilingualism and chairs the ISB Steering Committee. ISB has now taken place in Newcastle, UK (1997, 1999), Bristol, UK (2001), Tempe, Arizona, USA (2003), Barcelona, Spain (2005), Hamburg, Germany (2007), Utrecht, The Netherlands (2009), and will take place in Oslo, Norway in 2011.

He is Principal Editor of the International Journal of Bilingualism (Sage, http://ijb.sagepub.com/), and Editor of the book series, Blackwell Guides to Research Methods in Language and Linguistics (Wiley-Blackwell) and Child Language and Child Development (Multilingual Matters)

He chaired the Linguistics Subject Panel for the ESRC main recognition exercise for postgraduate research training in 2005 and the interim exercise in 2007.

He has been a member of the Language and Communication Study Section, Biobehaviour and Behavioural Processes Integrated Review Group, Centre for Scientific Review, National Institutes of Health, USA.

Li Wei has delivered keynote speeches at many international conferences, and given talks in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the USA.

Books authored/edited by Li Wei
Li Wei (ed.) The Bilingualism Reader. (1st edition, 2000, 2nd edition 2007) London: Routledge
Li Wei and Moyer, M. (eds) The Blackwell Handbook of Research Methods on Bilingualism and Multilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007
Auer, P. and Li Wei (eds) Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication. Handbook of Applied Linguistics Vol. 5. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007
Li Wei and Vivian Cook (eds) (2009) Contemporary Applied Linguistics. Vol. 1 Language Teaching and Learning. Vol. 2 Linguistics for the Real World. London: Continuum
Li Wei (ed.) Bilingualism and Multilingualism: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol. 1 Linguistic and Developmental Perspectives. Vol. 2 Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Perspectives. Vol. 3 Sociolinguistic and Interactional Perspectives. Vol. 4 Applied Perspectives. London: Routledge
J.-M. Dewaele, A. Housen and Li W, (eds). Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2003.
Li W, J.-M. Dewaele, and A. Housen (eds). Opportunities and Challenges of Bilingualism. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002.
Zhu Hua, Seedhouse, P., Li Wei and Cook, V. (eds) Language Learning and Teaching as Social Inter-Action. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
Li Wei (1994) Three Generations Two Language One Family: Language choice and language shift in a Chinese community in Britain. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
Li Wei (ed.) Conversational Code-Switching, Special issue of Journal of Pragmatics, 37: 3, 2005
Li Wei (ed.) Chinese Language, Culture and Communication, Special double issue of Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 7: 3&4, 1996
Li Wei is Manchu-Chinese, born in Beijing, China. He has a Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and a BA in English Language and Literature from Beijing Normal (Teachers) University. He taught English at high school level for two and a half years and at university level for one year and spent a year on a master’s degree programme in 20th century American poetry when an opportunity arose for him to go to Newcastle upon Tyne, England to teach Chinese in the then newly-established East Asian Centre at the University there. He did a part-time MA in English Language Studies while teaching Chinese language and society. He was then awarded a Ridley Fellowship to pursue a PhD in Speech Sciences. He later became a Research Associate working with Professor Lesley Milroy. Together they worked on a series of sociolinguistic projects on language choice and language shift in the Chinese community in the North East of England. He was made Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University in 1998. He was Director of the University's Centre for Research in Linguistics between 1999 and 2002 and Head of the School of Education, Communication & Language Sciences between 2002 and December 2006. Since 1st January 2007, he has been Chair of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Applied Linguistics & Communication at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Outside his academic life, Li Wei enjoys reading non-fiction, travelling, and eating out. He is married to Dr Zhu Hua, another Manchu-Chinese, and they have two young sons.