Beatrice Szczepek Reed is Professor of Linguistics and Co-Director of the Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication.

Her research is situated in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics and is concerned with naturally-occurring social interaction. Beatrice works on the phonetic and prosodic features of naturally occurring talk, cross-linguistic comparisons of interactional practices, and social interaction in contexts of learning. She also studies human-animal interaction.

Beatrice joined King's in 2017 from the University of York. Previously she worked at the University of Nottingham and the University of Konstanz (Germany).

Research

Beatrice studies spoken language, particularly the prosody of natural conversation; cross-linguistic comparisons of conversational practices; and institutional interaction. Her work aligns with the analytical approaches of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.

In the past, Beatrice has worked on prosodic mirroring as a resource for sequence organisation in interaction; the role of glottalisation and word linking for turn continuation in typologically different languages; speech rhythm and turn taking in different varieties of English; and instructional interactions in music teaching. She has also studied language and citizenship issues for Arabic speakers in the UK.

Her latest funded projects are on responses to news in Arabic and English talk-in-interaction; and on instructional interactions in horse-riding lessons.

Research interests

• naturally-occurring interaction
• the prosody of natural conversation
• cross-linguistic comparisons of interactional practices
• instructional interaction
• human-animal interaction
• language and social interaction in performance settings

Teaching

• Analysing Interaction
• English Phonetics and Phonology
• Linguistic Analysis for Language Teaching: Phonology

PhD supervision

Beatrice is happy to consider PhD proposals in the following areas:

• language and social interaction
• phonetics and phonology in naturally occurring talk
• institutional interaction
• human-animal interaction
• social interaction and language use in artistic and performance settings
• English pronunciation learning and teaching

Further information

For further details please see her Research Staff Profile.