PhD studentship in pragmatics at University College London, UK

The Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London has a new fully-funded PhD studentship in Pragmatics (theoretical and/or experimental), made available by funding from the Leverhulme Trust to Professor Robyn Carston for a project entitled ‘Understanding Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts and Imagined Worlds’.

We invite applications for this PhD studentship, which must start by 1st July 2011 at the latest and preferably by April 2011. Applicants should have an excellent academic record, including a first class undergraduate degree in linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology or a related discipline, and have knowledge of pragmatic theory (preferably including Sperber & Wilson’s relevance theory) and/or have done some empirical work on language processing.

The project involves the experimental testing of ideas about the nature of metaphor processing, so the ideal candidate will combine theoretical depth with experimental skills. The primary supervisor will be Robyn Carston, on the theoretical side, and the secondary supervisor will be Dr Paula Rubio-Fernandez, who is an experienced experimental pragmaticist. The student will also benefit from interaction with the very active pragmatics-semantics research group in the Division and the recently established experimental pragmatics group, headed by Dr Richard Breheny, and including Dr Nausicaa Pouscoulous (development pragmatics) and Dr Nathan Klinedinst (semantics-pragmatics interface). One of the key advisors on the project is Professor Deirdre Wilson, well-known for her ground-breaking work with Dan Sperber on Relevance Theory.

For initial expressions of interest and for more details about the project, please contact Robyn Carston: robyn.carston at ucl.ac.uk.

The deadline for applications is 31st January 2011.

To apply for the studentship, please send your C.V., degree transcripts, personal statement and two references to Natalie Wilkins: n.wilkins at ucl.ac.uk