Bio

My China-related research and teaching interests lie chiefly in two areas: (a) Chinese semantics and pragmatics; and (b) diversity of Sinitic languages. I have published extensively in these areas, and have made significant contributions to multidisciplinary and scholarly debates on the extent of human universality and on the cultural specificity of human conceptualisation across several domains, including emotion, senses, and social categorisation. The Chinese Linguistics course I teach focuses on the diversity of Sinitic languages, covering scripts and sounds, dictionaries, word-formation, structure, cultural meanings, aesthetics, typology and areal features. Currently, I work on three lines of China-related research: (a) language innovation in contemporary China: linguistic forms are recruited to express new meanings and ideas, and the interplay between the language creator, structure and environment; (b) changing norms of social interaction following massive social change; and (c) documenting and preserving Shanghai Wu.