Nicola McLelland
Professor of German and History of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts
Contact
Biography
I studied German and French at the University of Sydney, Australia. After two years on a scholarship in Bonn, Germany, I gained my PhD from the University of Sydney in medieval German literature. An MPhil in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge sparked my interest in the history of people's ideas and beliefs about language and how to use it. My first post was at Trinity College, Dublin; I've been in German, now part of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, at Nottingham since 2005. In 2020, I was awarded the Grimm Prize, awarded annually to an academic working in German Studies outside Germany who has made an outstanding contribution to international work in the area. You can read more about my personal interest in German here, in a profile for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) who award the Grimm prize.
I've never stopped learning languages. In addition to French and German, I have made good headway with Latin, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, and, most recently, Chinese.
Expertise Summary
My research explores the history of people's ideas about languages, how to learn them and how to use them. Together with Richard Smith (Warwick) I established an AHRC-funded research network on the History of Language Learning and Teaching (HoLLT) in Britain and beyond (2012-2014), which continues as the HoLLT network. My most recent book, Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages provides a comprehensive history of language teaching and learning in the UK from its earliest beginnings to the present, including the history of languages policy and assessment. My previous book, German Through English Eyes, published in 2015, is a history of how German language and culture has been presented to English-speaking learners of German since 1500. Other research interests include German medieval literature (the subject of my PhD), German sociolinguistics, language standardization, codeswitching, language and gender, and linguistic purism.
Books
- Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages.A History of Language Education, Assessment and Policy in Britain Routledge, 2017, 264pp.
- German Through English Eyes. A History of Language Teaching and Learning in Britain, 1500-2000. Harrassowitz, 2015. 444 pp. Reviewed in the Times Higher
- Literarischer Stil. Mittelalterliche Dichtung zwischen Konvention und Innovation (ed. with E. Andersen, R. Bauschke, and S. Reuvekamp). De Gruyter, 2015. 517pp.
- Building the history of modern language learning. Special issue of Language & History, 57.1, ed. with Richard Smith. (Fully open access).
- Germania Remembered 1500-2009: Commemorating and Inventing a Germanic Past (ed. with Christina Lee). Tuscon, AZ: ACMRS, 2012. 415 pp.
- Schottelius's Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haubtsprache (1663) and its place in early modern European vernacular language study. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 419 pp.
- Humanismus in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. (ed. with Hans-Jochen Schiewer and Stefanie Schmitt). Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007. 436 pp.
- Standardization. Studies from the Germanic Languages (ed. with Andrew Linn). Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 235. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002. 258 pp.
- Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet. Narrative style and entertainment. Cambridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2000. 260 pp.
Professional Service: I have been a member of the AHRC Peer Review College since 2010. I have previously been member of the Philological Society's Council, and am currently President of the Association for German Studies. I am also Chair of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, and was lead editor of the journal Language & History,for ten years to 2020. I also serve on the editorial board of a number of other journals.
Teaching Summary
I teach German linguistics across the board, from the early history of the Germanic languages to current developments in German speech and grammar, as well as German sociolinguistics, including such… read more
Research Summary
My main area of research is the history of ideas about language, especially the history of grammar, lexicography (dictionaries) and foreign language education, and issues in language standardization… read more
Read about our 2019 visiting Leverhulme Visiting Professor Douglas Kibbee here, reflecting on "Rethinking language and inequality"
Blogs
Plurilingualism in the flesh - tales from an academic's travels (26 November 2019)
Noticing languages - noticing language inequality (20 April, 2019)
Dipping a toe into language standards and variation in multilingual China (16 January 2018)
'I am the circumflex'- language rules, language purity, and language rage (23 November 2016)
Podcast: For a podcast about questions of correct language, part of the MEITS project (www.meits.org), see here: https://soundcloud.com/meits-research-project, "What's good and bad about the language(s) we use - and who even cares about correctness anyway?"
In the media
Radio 3's Free Thinking (June 5, 2018): The rise of translation and the death of foreign language learning
In May 2014 I was on BBC Nottingham talking about the learning of European languages in the UK: http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/clas/2014/05/19/nicola-mclelland-on-bbc-radio-nottingham/.
I have talked about the words Deutsch, Achtung and Standard as part of Nottingham's Words of the World project:: http://www.wordsoftheworld.co.uk/videos/deutsch.html and http://www.wordsoftheworld.co.uk/videos/achtung.html
For a paper which I gave to the University of Newcastle School of Modern Languages about the history of German language learning in the UK, see http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sml/about/seminars/item/McLelland
For a (very brief) appearance on Radio 4's Making History to discuss Germans visiting Britain as part of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century, as reflected in language teaching materials, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010dp0x#synopsis
For an accessible introduction to the history of learning German in England, see here.
I teach German linguistics across the board, from the early history of the Germanic languages to current developments in German speech and grammar, as well as German sociolinguistics, including such questions as how Germans have felt over the centuries about borrowings from other languages (currently mainly English!) or how gender-fluid identity is dealt with in German, where grammatical gender is hard to avoid.
I also enjoy teaching German language at all levels.
Postgraduate supervision: I currently supervise students working on German, French and Chinese, and have previously supervised projects in the history of language teaching and in various aspects of sociolinguistics and historical sociolinguistics, working on Latin, French, Spanish and Ukrainian.
I welcome enquiries about supervising undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations in any of the areas listed above, or any of the areas mentioned in my research summary.
Current Research
My main area of research is the history of ideas about language, especially the history of grammar, lexicography (dictionaries) and foreign language education, and issues in language standardization and variation. I was Deputy Director and strand leader on the project Multilingualism - Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) funded by the AHRC under the Open World Research Initiative (July 2016 to July 2020). For more information about the research strand at Nottingham, see here.
I warmly welcome enquiries about postgraduate supervision. I am currently co-supervising students working on German online youth language, especially in YouTube comments; on minority languages in France; and on the history of teaching Mandarin Chinese to Mongolian speakers. Recently completed PhD projects include work on the Ukrainian language in the UK; French language advice columns from the 19th century and the present day; teaching Latin in 19th-century Germany and England; and a discourse analysis of exchanges in the Mexican Congresss.
Thanks to a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, in 2017 I published the first comprehensive history of language learning in Britain, including teaching methods, policy, and assessment (Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages). An AHRC fellowship in 2011 funded a project on the history of textbooks of German for English speakers, resulting in my book German Through English Eyes in 2015 (reviewed here).
An AHRC-funded research network (2012-14) with Richard Smith (Warwick) on the history of language learning and teaching the UK (HOLLT), led to a special issue of the journal Language & History, and a special issue of the Language Learning Journal. A three-volume collection on the History of Language Learning and Teaching appeared in 2018. The network continues as hollt.net under the aegis of the International Association of Applied Linguistics. The research has led to a new AHRC-funded collaboration with Simon Coffey (King's College London) to produce teacher-training packages that examine five key issues in current teaching practice in their historical context.
My other research interests include sociolinguistics, especially language standardization and variation, language and gender, linguistic purism, language and soft power, and medieval German literature (the subject of my PhD).
Past Research
I have previously worked on the history of German grammar-writing and linguistic reflection from the Middle Ages to the present day. My monograph on the major 17th-century language theorist J.G. Schottelius appeared in 2011. The research was funded in part by two fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation and from the Irish Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council.
Future Research
I welcome collaborations with colleagues in the UK and beyond in any of the above areas, whether in German, the history of foreign language learning and teaching (in the widest sense) and language standardization in Europe and beyond. I am currently developing my interest in the history of bilingual dictionaries in Europe.