Faculty and Students
Dr . Lucy Pickering
Lucy
Pickering is Associate Professor and director of the Applied
Linguistics Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics
in 1999 from the University of Florida. She has taught in University of
Alabama, Georgetown University and Georgia State University. She
joined the faculty at Texas A&M University-Commerce in August 2010.
Her research program is focused on spoken discourse. She has done
considerable work with Brazil’s model of Discourse Intonation and its
application to second language classroom discourse. Additional
interests include
- Prosodic development of second language learners
- English as a Lingua Franca
- The intersection between prosody and pragmatics in varieties of English
- Collaborative work on Papiamentu phonology with Dr. Yolanda Rivera at the University of Puerto Rico
- Collaborative work on the analysis of spoken corpora including workers with physical impairment (with Carrie Bruce at Georgia Institute of Technology) and conversational data (with the CNRS Laboratoire Langue et Parole in Aix en Provence, France)
She has been published in a wide range of journals including TESOL Quarterly, World Englishes, Journal of Pidgin & Creole Languages, Modern Language Journal, System, English for Specific Purposes, Intercultural Pragmatics and Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. In 2010, she co-authored a textbook (with Greta Gorsuch, Colleen Meyers and Dale Giffree) for International Teaching Assistants working in North American university environments titled English Communication for International Teaching Assistants published by Waveland Press.
Dr. Christian F. Hempelmann
Christian F. "Kiki" Hempelmann received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Purdue University in 2003 with a dissertation on the computational phonology of puns. He also holds degrees from Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, and Youngstown State University in Ohio. His research focuses on computational semantics and natural language processing, semantic and general humor theory, information security and assurance, and general linguistics. He has worked as Director of Research and Development and as Chief Scientific Officer at Internet and enterprise search companies, and has served as assistant professor at Georgia Southern University. He has been invited as a speaker and has been published widely in his fields of expertise.
link to CV: http://www.kikihempelmann.com
Research Students
Julie Bouchard
PhD student, Research Assistant
E-mail: jbouchard@leomail.tamuc.edu
I received my M.A. in Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and my B.Ed inTeaching English as a Second Language at Université Laval in Québec city in Canada. I am mostly interested in second language acquisition with a special interest in motivation and language learning. My research interests are influenced by my experience teaching English as a second language in the Québec School system. I am highly interested in discourse analysis, mostly CA.
Laura Di Ferrante
Phd Student, Research Assistant
Email: ldiferrante@leomail.tamuc.edu
Laura Di Ferrante is a graduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce, attached at the Applied Linguistics Lab. Here she taught Italian for Reading, Modern Grammar, and Honors Beginning Italian I and II.
She gained the great part of her education in Italy, where she comes from. In 2008, she took her (first) Ph.D. in Linguistics and Teaching Italian to Speakers of Other Languages at the University for Foreigners of Siena, dissertating on linguistic attitudes in Italy. Her study investigated both on inner linguistic prejudice and on the attitudes of Italians toward foreigners through a 1500 questionnaire research
She taught several courses of Italian as Second/Foreign language in Rome and gave some lectures on "Language and Globalization" at the University of Cassino.
She took her “Laurea” in 2003 in Communication Sciences in Rome at the "La Sapienza" University defending a dissertation in Sociolinguistics on the language of TV commercials targeted to children.
Her research interests focus on sociolinguistics and discourse analysis as they apply to language classroom, workplace, and movies.
Charlotte Fofo Lomotey
Phd Student, Research Assistant
Welcome to my page. I come from Ghana in West Africa. I received my Master of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics from the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Ghana. Prior to my coming to Commerce, I taught Linguistics courses at the UEW. My research interests include:
- Differences between and within dialects
- Some aspects of English Phonology
- Vowel Quality
- Language Documentation
- Discourse and Prosody
I would welcome any collaboration in any of these and other related areas.
Email : cflomotey@leomail.tamuc.edu
Shigehito Menjo
PhD Student, English Instructor 
Shigehito Menjo received his M.A in Japanese Language and Pedagogy,
and B.A in Linguistics with the SLAT(Second Language Acquisition and
Teaching)
certificate in English fromUniversity of Oregon. He has severalyears of
experience in teaching Japanese at universities in the United States.
His major research interest is the acquisition of prosody in second
language, especially in English and Japanese. He is also interested in
second language teaching, World Englishes, and corpus studies in
humor/comedy.
Geoffrey Clegg
PhD student
Geoffrey Clegg is a graduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce. He holds B.A.s in History and English from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA , and an M.A. in English Literature from the same institution. Previous to attending Texas A&M University-Commerce, he held the position of Instructor of Professional and Technical Writing at Louisiana State University Alexandria where he taught a variety of composition courses. He has also taught Basics of Computing for Louisiana State University Eunice and Art History for Northern Illinois University. His research interests include:
- Discourse analysis
- Second-language writing/reading
- Philology
- Stylistics
E-mail: gclegg@leomail.tamuc.edu
Associated Faculty
Rebecca Bolin
