sophie nicholls
Fulbright Postgraduate Award
Media Profile
“Indigenous languages are recognised as being distinctly different to ’western’ styles of communication, with greater focus on cultural reference and relevance; cooperative interaction with regard to taking turns, the use of pauses and word order and emphasis of family relationships. Without understanding something of this interactional style, effective communication between speakers of some Indigenous languages and mainstream ‘Anglo’ Australians can be difficult and presents challenges in providing services such as education, health and legal services.”
Sophie Nicholls has won a 2006 Fulbright Postgraduate Award to conduct research towards her Australia PhD, through the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (UNM) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Sophie will investigate some aspects of discourse in two Australian Indigenous languages; Roper River Kriol and Ritharrngu through linguistic analysis.
Kriol is spoken by over ten thousand people across the Northern Territory of Australia and Western Australia. Despite this language being widespread, to date there has been little linguistic research on it and even less on how it is used in daily interaction. The majority of Kriol speakers are Indigenous Australians, who do not have the same interactional style as mainstream ‘Anglo’ Australians. However, many professionals such as health, legal and education professionals assume they can understand and be understood by speakers of the Kriol language.
“It is my aim is to investigate this English lexified Creole by comparing its discourse style with that of a traditional language, also still spoken, called Ritharrngu. My research will look into the 'discourse' or conversational style of the Kriol language and compare it with a traditional language (spoken in a community) to see if the Kriol discourse style has been influenced by traditional language.”
Through researching aspects of language such as word order, discourse particles, speech act verbs, and how speakers reference places, objects and people, Sophie aims to develop a foundation that will explain more about how these languages are used in interaction.
“The United States has been influential in developing the discipline of linguistics by initiating anthropological research into indigenous languages and cultures. I look forward to working with the world’s leading experts in discourse analysis, with some of the best and most rigorous transcription processes, as well as working with experts in the grammatical description of language.”
Sophie will study with experts in Indigenous and endangered languages, semantic analysis and functional grammatical analysis. “I am especially interested in collaborating with researchers who are experts in more than one of these fields, and thus in a position to contribute significantly to the comprehensive and thorough analysis of the data I have collected.”
Sophie spent nearly a year as the Ngukurr based linguist with the Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation at the Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre in the Northern Territory and she is currently a postgraduate student in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at the University of New England (UNE). She completed an Arts degree with a double\major in linguistics from the University of Newcastle and then went on to graduate with first class honours and the University Medal in Linguistics from UNE.