Language has become a substantial component of my interdisciplinary scholarship, both through formal postgraduate training in linguistics and through sustained study of a wide range of languages and language families.
My interests extend beyond language acquisition or multilingualism. I am interested in language as a human cognitive and social phenomenon: how languages encode meaning, how they change over time, how sound systems develop, how writing systems represent language, how languages interact, and how political and social power affects their classification, standardisation and survival.
Language also intersects directly with much of my other scholarship. Legal interpretation is fundamentally concerned with meaning. Historical research frequently depends upon language and linguistic change. My work on China requires sensitivity to Chinese language and concepts. My research on Ukraine, Russia and Eastern Europe raises questions of language, identity and imperialism. Theology requires engagement with Greek and Latin terminology and problems of translation. My work on culture and social institutions similarly requires an understanding of intercultural communication.
My linguistic work consequently combines formal linguistic theory, applied linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and intercultural communication with an unusually broad practical engagement with languages themselves.
Formal Study of Linguistics
My formal postgraduate study of linguistics began at the Australian National University, where I completed a postgraduate qualification in Linguistics.
My specialist studies included Language Across Time, Phonetics and Phonology, Semantics and Quantitative Research Methods in Linguistics.
These courses gave me formal foundations across several quite different parts of the discipline. Historical linguistics introduced systematic approaches to language change and linguistic relationships. Phonetics and phonology provided the means to analyse the physical and structural organisation of speech sounds. Semantics addressed the construction and analysis of meaning. Quantitative research methods provided training in empirical linguistic methodology.
The programme was strongly research-oriented in my case. I used my postgraduate papers to investigate questions extending well beyond the immediate course material and to connect linguistic theory with my existing interests in history, law, politics and society.
Historical and Comparative Linguistics
Historical linguistics has become one of my strongest linguistic interests.
My work in Language Across Time included research into the classification and historical relationships of languages, including the use of emerging computational linguistic methods to reassess conventional classifications.
I undertook postgraduate research reconsidering the classification of the Slavic languages and examining the relationship between Baltic and Slavic languages. This involved questions extending beyond the construction of language-family trees. Language classification reflects historical processes of divergence, contact, migration, political separation and standardisation.
My practical study of numerous related European languages has reinforced this interest. Studying several members of the Germanic, Slavic, Romance and Celtic families provides a different perspective on linguistic relationship from studying individual languages in isolation.
I am particularly interested in dialect continua and in cases where the boundaries between “language” and “dialect” reflect political and historical developments as much as purely linguistic distance.
Language, Empire and Political Power
One of my major research interests lies at the intersection of linguistics, history and political power.
My postgraduate linguistic research examined Ukrainian in the shadow of Russian imperial power, with comparative attention to the historical positioning of Polish. This required consideration of language policy, standardisation, prestige, suppression and the relationship between language and national identity.
Ukraine provides an especially important case because linguistic history can easily become distorted when contemporary or imperial categories are projected backwards. Ukrainian and Russian developed within a much more complicated East Slavic linguistic and political history, while Ukrainian territories themselves experienced different Polish-Lithuanian, Habsburg, Russian and Soviet political environments.
My wider historical work has consequently continued to investigate the relationship between Ukrainian and Russian, the development of their literary standards and the political uses of claims about linguistic relationship.
The broader question is not confined to Ukraine. States and empires can influence which varieties acquire prestige, which become administrative or educational languages, which are classified as languages or dialects, and which varieties become associated with particular political identities.
Language can therefore be simultaneously a product of history and an instrument of political power.
Semantics and Meaning
Semantics provides an important connection between my linguistic and legal scholarship.
My postgraduate work at ANU included formal study of semantics and specialist research into Natural Semantic Metalanguage and its potential application to legal interpretation.
Natural Semantic Metalanguage is particularly interesting because it attempts to identify a relatively small set of fundamental semantic concepts through which more complex meanings can be explicated without simply replacing one culturally embedded expression with another.
This raises questions directly relevant to law.
Legal interpretation routinely assumes that meaning can be identified through words, context and conventional linguistic usage. Yet apparently synonymous words can possess different semantic ranges, while translation across languages introduces additional conceptual problems.
My work therefore investigates what contemporary semantic theory can contribute to legal interpretation rather than treating statutory meaning solely as an internally legal problem.
I presented this research at the UWA Law School in 2023 in a paper entitled Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and Legal Interpretation: Cutting Edge Linguistic Theory and the Law.
Language and Legal Interpretation
The relationship between language and law has developed into one of the most distinctive parts of my linguistic scholarship.
Law operates through language. Statutes, contracts, judgments and treaties depend upon words, yet legal scholarship has not always incorporated developments in linguistic theory into its understanding of interpretation.
My work with Tatiana Tkachenko, Poetry and Tax Statute: Translation as Interpretation, published by the University of Latvia Press in 2022, used translation and poetry to explore problems of legal interpretation.
The comparison is more than metaphorical. Translation requires choices among possible meanings rather than mechanical substitution of equivalent words. Legal interpretation likewise involves relationships among text, context, linguistic convention and the interpreter.
My wider work on statutory interpretation, international taxation and the interpretation of Chinese legal materials repeatedly encounters these problems.
The combination of legal expertise and formal linguistic training allows me to approach interpretation from both sides: as a lawyer concerned with authoritative legal meaning and as a linguistically trained scholar concerned with how language actually produces and communicates meaning.
Applied Linguistics
I subsequently extended my linguistic education through a Master of Applied Linguistics at the University of New England.
My coursework included Introduction to Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Writing Systems of the World and Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, culminating in a substantial research thesis.
Applied linguistics broadened my work from the formal properties and historical development of languages towards the ways language operates between people, cultures and institutions.
Intercultural communication was particularly relevant to my existing research. Much of my career has involved questions arising when concepts, institutions and systems developed within one social environment encounter another.
Language is central to that process.
Communication across cultures is not simply a matter of translating vocabulary. Participants can bring different assumptions about authority, politeness, relationships, categories, institutions and appropriate forms of communication to the same interaction.
This connects directly with my earlier China research and with my work on law and social institutions.
Equity and Intercultural Communication
My Master’s thesis brought linguistics and law together through a study of the Court of Equity within an intercultural communication framework.
Equity provides an unusually productive setting for linguistic and cultural analysis because its doctrines developed within a particular historical, social and conceptual environment.
My research examined the extent to which legal reasoning itself can be understood as communication occurring within a culturally developed interpretative community.
This raises a broader problem relevant to comparative law. Legal concepts do not necessarily move intact between societies merely because their terminology can be translated.
The thesis therefore develops an issue that has appeared repeatedly in my scholarship: institutions and concepts carry cultural and historical assumptions that can become invisible to those operating within them.
Applied linguistics provides methods for making some of those assumptions visible.
Phonetics and Phonology
My formal training also includes postgraduate study in phonetics and phonology.
For my specialist research in this area I examined Danish phonology.
Danish is particularly interesting because the relationship between its written form and contemporary pronunciation can obscure its close structural relationship with other Scandinavian languages. Its sound system also illustrates how extensive phonological change can differentiate closely related languages even where vocabulary and grammatical structures retain obvious historical relationships.
This work complemented my wider comparative interest in the Germanic languages, particularly Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots and English.
Formal phonological study has also improved my ability to approach unfamiliar languages analytically rather than simply through vocabulary and grammar.
Writing Systems
My Master of Applied Linguistics included specialist study of the writing systems of the world.
Writing systems are especially interesting to me because my language experience crosses fundamentally different traditions: the Latin and Greek alphabets, Cyrillic, Hebrew writing and the Chinese character system.
Writing should not simply be equated with language. A language can change writing system; related languages can use different scripts; unrelated languages can share one; and writing can preserve distinctions or historical forms that have disappeared from speech.
Scripts can also acquire powerful political, cultural and religious significance.
My study of writing systems therefore connects naturally with my interests in historical linguistics, language politics and cultural identity.
Language Preservation and Minority Languages
Minority and regional languages constitute another important strand of my work.
During my Applied Linguistics studies I researched the language of Shetland and attempts to preserve it.
This connected particularly well with my postgraduate historical work on Shetland and Orkney. The Northern Isles demonstrate the interaction among language shift, political incorporation, migration and identity, including the historical movement from Norn towards Scots and later English.
My studies of Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and Frisian have exposed me to several different contemporary responses to language decline or marginalisation.
These cases demonstrate that language preservation involves much more than documenting vocabulary. It concerns intergenerational transmission, education, prestige, literary production, institutional recognition and whether speakers regard a language as useful and socially meaningful.
Chinese Languages
Chinese represents my longest sustained engagement with a non-English linguistic tradition.
Mandarin formed a compulsory and substantial component of my undergraduate Asian Studies degree. I studied Mandarin at Hangzhou University in China in 1995 and subsequently undertook further formal Chinese study at UTS and UNSW, alongside continued independent use and study.
My China research has also required engagement with the linguistic diversity concealed by the English expression “Chinese”.
I have undertaken a broader comparative review of the Chinese languages and regional varieties and studied Hokkien/Minanhua, including Taiwanese, in 2005.
This was particularly relevant to my research in Fujian and into overseas Chinese communities. Southern Chinese languages cannot be treated simply as peripheral variations of Mandarin when investigating migration, kinship and transnational networks. Minnan varieties have historically connected communities across Fujian, Taiwan and substantial parts of Southeast Asia.
Language geography therefore provides another way of seeing a Chinese world that does not map neatly onto modern political borders.
Germanic Languages
I have studied languages across much of the Germanic family.
My German study has included multiple university courses at the University of Queensland and continued reading of German-language literature and other material.
I have studied Dutch through the University of Groningen and continued reading in Dutch. I also undertook Frisian study through Groningen and supplemented this through engagement with Frisian literature, including interviewing a Frisian novelist.
My postgraduate historical studies have involved Lowland Scots, including reading literary and historical material in Scots. Afrikaans formed part of my schooling in South Africa and I have subsequently continued to read it.
My Scandinavian study includes Swedish through the University of Queensland and two courses in Norwegian through the University of Oslo.
Taken together, these languages provide an unusually broad practical perspective on the Germanic family. They make historical relationships among English, Scots, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German and the Scandinavian languages directly observable.
Celtic Languages
My most substantial Celtic language study has been Irish.
I began formal Irish study at the University of Sydney in 2004 and continued through the Sydney Irish Language School, including multiple intensive winter and summer programmes. I have continued to engage with Irish-language literature.
My interest in Irish is linguistic, historical and cultural. It intersects with my research into Irish history, Gaelic culture and the historical connections between Ireland and Scotland.
I subsequently undertook approximately two years of regular Welsh classes through Dysgu Cymraeg and have also studied Scottish Gaelic through online coursework.
Studying languages from different branches of Celtic provides an important comparative perspective on their development, survival and revival.
Slavic and Baltic Languages
My engagement with Slavic languages has become particularly extensive.
I have undertaken detailed Ukrainian study through Lingva and private tuition. My Polish studies include university courses at the University of Queensland and further private tuition.
I studied Croatian at the University of Queensland and have undertaken private study of Serbian and Bulgarian. I completed assessed Slovak study through Comenius University. I have done multiple courses on Russian language and have studied Russian tax and other law in Russian.
These practical studies complement my formal linguistic research into Slavic classification, Ukrainian language history and the relationship between language and imperial politics.
I have also studied Latvian through certified coursework and private tuition and undertaken introductory Lithuanian.
The Baltic languages are especially important to my comparative linguistic interests because of their historical relationship with Slavic and their unusually significant position within Indo-European historical linguistics.
Romance Languages and Latin
My Romance-language studies provide another comparative family.
I completed Latin at UWA with a High Distinction, having also encountered Latin at school. Latin provides an important historical foundation not only for the Romance languages but for my work in European history, Christianity and legal history.
My French studies have included multiple levels through the Alliance Française, supplemented by regular reading of French literature.
I have studied Portuguese through the University of Sydney and undertaken coursework in Spanish and Romanian. I also completed Italian at UWA with a High Distinction.
Studying Latin alongside several of its modern descendants provides direct insight into processes of language change that are otherwise encountered abstractly in historical linguistics.
Greek
My relationship with Greek extends across different periods of the language.
I first encountered Greek during primary schooling. My theological studies subsequently included New Testament Greek, and I have undertaken further Greek study through the University of Athens, the University of Sydney and private tuition.
Greek is especially important because it connects several areas of my scholarship: linguistics, ancient and Byzantine history, theology and patristics.
The ability to compare ancient, Koine and modern forms also makes Greek an exceptionally interesting example of long-term linguistic continuity and change.
Hebrew and Other Language Study
I completed two certificate levels of Hebrew over two years through the Rosen School of Hebrew.
Hebrew is linguistically important in its own right and particularly relevant to my theological and historical work because of its relationship with biblical literature, Jewish history and the unusual modern history of Hebrew as a spoken language.
My language study has also extended beyond the principal Indo-European and Chinese areas of my work.
I studied Zulu at school in South Africa and have returned to the language through contemporary online study. I have undertaken introductory Noongar study through Curtin University and introductory study of Japanese, Korean and Hindi.
These languages broaden my comparative understanding of linguistic structures beyond the European language families that constitute much of my historical linguistic work.
Linguistics, Cognition and Human Language
Linguistics also intersects with my work in psychology.
Language is simultaneously biological, cognitive and social. Individual humans acquire and process language through cognitive capacities, yet no individual independently constructs the linguistic system into which they are born.
This makes language an unusually clear example of the relationship between individual cognition and social institutions.
My interests in semantics, creativity, associative cognition and human sociality consequently intersect with linguistic questions. Meaning depends upon individual cognitive processes but also upon shared conventions that no individual speaker controls.
Language therefore occupies an important position within my broader attempt to understand the relationship between human beings and the social worlds they collectively construct.
Artificial Intelligence, Language and Creativity
More recently, my linguistic interests have extended into artificial intelligence and language production.
In 2023 I presented research on artificial intelligence and poetry composition, considering quality, authorship and taxation.
Generative artificial intelligence raises particularly interesting linguistic questions because it can produce highly sophisticated linguistic output without acquiring language through the ordinary biological and social developmental processes of a human speaker.
This intersects with my wider research into creativity and associative insight. It raises questions about what linguistic competence demonstrates, what constitutes authorship and creativity, and how linguistic production relates to understanding.
These questions increasingly connect my linguistic, psychological, legal and artistic research.
Linguistics Across My Wider Scholarship
Linguistic questions recur throughout work that is formally located in other disciplines.
My China scholarship requires attention to Mandarin, Chinese linguistic diversity and the difficulty of translating culturally embedded concepts. My historical work investigates language change, standardisation, migration and the relationship between language and national identity. My theology requires attention to Greek terminology and the historical movement of concepts between Greek, Latin and modern languages.
My legal work repeatedly encounters statutory meaning, interpretation and translation. My sociology considers language as a social institution and marker of group identity. My political-economy work encounters language policy as an instrument of state formation and sometimes political domination.
The breadth of my language study is therefore not separate from my research. It supplies comparative material for it.
My Work in Linguistics and Languages
I regard linguistics as a substantial component of my interdisciplinary scholarship, supported by both formal postgraduate training and an unusually broad practical engagement with languages.
My formal qualifications include postgraduate Linguistics study at the Australian National University and a Master of Applied Linguistics from the University of New England. My training encompasses historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology, semantics, quantitative research methods, applied linguistics, intercultural communication, writing systems and applied linguistic research methodology.
My research has examined Slavic and Baltic linguistic classification, computational approaches to language relationships, Ukrainian and Russian language history and imperialism, Danish phonology, Natural Semantic Metalanguage, legal interpretation, intercultural communication, the linguistic world of Shetland and the relationship between translation and interpretation. My Master’s research brought applied linguistics directly into conversation with legal and intercultural interpretation.
Alongside this formal scholarship, I have undertaken structured study across an exceptionally broad range of languages, including substantial work in Mandarin Chinese, Irish, German, French, Ukrainian, Polish, Greek and other languages, and comparative study across the Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic and Romance families.
The point of this breadth is not to claim equal proficiency in every language I have studied. It is the intellectual perspective produced by repeatedly encountering language from different directions: learning related languages, observing historical divergence, encountering different sound and writing systems, reading texts in languages other than English and examining how language interacts with culture, politics and identity.
The recurring question underlying this work is:
How does the extraordinary human capacity for language produce systems of meaning that change through time, structure communication and thought, express social identity, cross cultural boundaries and become themselves instruments through which law, culture and political power operate?
