There’s multiple editions of the Macquarie Dictionary, of course (Pam sat on its Editorial Committee from 1986 to 2006). There’s the Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (1995) and follow ups including the Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (2007). And stacks and stacks of issues of Australian Style – the must-read bulletin that Pam edited for 16 years.

Then there’s impressive array of what Pam calls ‘computerised corpora’:  specialised online databases for researching Australian English.  And the online ‘termbanks’ like HealthTermFinder and LawTermFinder that Pam has helped curate to provide ordinary Australians – particularly those from non-English speaking backgrounds – with simple explanations for complex medical, scientific and legal terminology.

Looking at all this, it’s not hard to see why Macquarie has such an outstanding reputation for linguistics (and why we ranked 27^th in the world in this discipline in the 2021 QS subject rankings). So how does Pam feel when she looks around at her printed legacy?

“When I look at these publications, I reflect on the wonderous opportunities they represent,” she says. “Here I was, teaching and just doing the ordinary things an academic does, and then there were all these research frontiers that were so interesting to me.”

And despite officially retiring in 2007, Pam has not slowed down when it comes to her passion for researching language. In fact, Pam has embraced her status as an Emeritus Professor – a title bestowed on highly accomplished Macquarie academics in retirement – by delving into more and more exciting projects.

“The thing that hit me when I retired is that I hadn’t changed, and I had a lot of unfinished business,” Pam says. “I was still in touch with so many people who were active in research and offering me opportunities to do things. It seemed almost a crime to stop!

“For me, the role of Emeritus Professor is about maintaining the energy that I developed over a career.  I may have hopped off the teaching treadmill but the stimulus of language remains all around me every day – you still can’t take me to a restaurant without me picking the menu apart,” she laughs.

Much of Pam’s recent energy has gone into the recent launch of the Australian Manual of Style (or AMOS) – a comprehensive online guide that provides practical advice for anyone who writes, edits or designs content.

With controversy around the public service’s long-revered Style Manual now being produced by the Digital Transformation Agency, Pam sees AMOS as the new ‘must have’ manual for good writing.

“Being fully online and produced by publishers and researchers who are committed to keeping it regularly updated – AMOS is a really exciting resource.”

Sounds like it’s time to make some more room on that legacy bookshelf.

Macquarie staff and students can access the Australian Manual of Style via the Macquarie University Library. 

Rebecca recently wrapped up another successful two-day science camp for children with hearing challenges. This innovative program – run jointly by the Australian Hearing Hub and Junior Science Academy – has been operating for two years and has been funded for a further three years, thanks to the generous support of the AHH and Campus Life.

Rebecca is also part of a team (led by Dr John Newall) that has been awarded funding from the United Nations’ Global Partnership for Assistive Technology to address hearing loss in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

1) In a nutshell, my job is to…
Support students to becoming competent and caring hearing health care professionals. All the teaching and research we do is motivated by the need to make real-world improvements in the lives of people with hearing loss.

2) My definition of success is…
Having a positive impact on the people I work with and the community.

3) A person at Macquarie that inspires me is…
I work with a lot of inspiring people, but at the moment I am particularly impressed with our international students who are isolated from family, experiencing challenges and uncertainty, whilst still doing amazing things in their learning.

4) This year I want to…
Get my family through as best as I can given the current challenges we are all facing.

5) The scariest thing I’ve ever done is…
Have a second child, knowing what I was in for after the first!

6) As a kid, I was…
Younger than I am now.

7) My guilty pleasure is…
I don’t see a reason to feel guilty about anything pleasurable.

8) I’m scared of…
Many of the things happening in the world today, especially the proliferation of wilful ignorance.

9) The most important thing I’ve learned in the last five years is
Who to take feedback from, and who to ignore.

10) If I had the day off today, you would find me…
Running or indoor rock-climbing. I’m the type of parent who is happiest when my kids and I are literally climbing the walls.

The Australian Hearing Hub – a pioneering collection of Australia’s leading hearing organisations – has been a distinctive sight on University Avenue since its opening in 2013.  Seven years on, we celebrate World Hearing Day on 3 March by stepping inside the Hub to see how co-location has turned into powerful and unified alliance improving the lives of people with hearing and language disorders around the world.

Our guide is Professor David McAlpine, ARC Laureate Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and the Hub’s Director of Hearing Research.

You arrived at Macquarie in 2015, not too long after the opening of the Hearing Hub. How have you seen the Hub evolve? 

There’s been a real maturing of how the partners see each other, and how we’re working together to change the dialogue on hearing health – it’s moved well beyond being just a common building with disparate organisations, to a real synergy.

And we shouldn’t underestimate Macquarie’s role in driving that synergy. For example, The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) and Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre (an RIDBC service) are now an integral part of Macquarie University – their education programs now run through us and they’re bringing their whole operation over from North Rocks to Macquarie campus.

How is this strengthening of partnerships helping us in our mission to transform hearing health?

Well, government investment in research is increasingly tied to impact and engagement, and no other university can boast our portfolio of partners. So, it means we can make a really strong case for investment in hearing, and we’ve been able to secure some important grants – like Professor Katherine Demuth’s grant last year to understand communication challenges of children with hearing loss, which we’re doing in collaboration with Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children, The Shepherd Centre, Hearing Australia, Cochlear Limited and Parents of Deaf Children.

How have the discoveries coming out of the Hearing Hub changed how hearing loss is treated in Australia?

When it comes to hearing loss in children, we’ve moved significantly to early intervention and rehabilitation. All our partners are now heavily involved in early identification, implementation, rehabilitation, hearing technologies – all before the age of six months.

Quite a few of the Hub partners have been collaborating on the LOCHI study, which shows that language abilities are strongly correlated with how early intervention occurred. We had a fantastic one-off chance to look at this when newborn hearing screening programs began rolling out at different times, in different Australian states. We had all these cohorts of the same age group, receiving intervention at different times.

Our research coming out of the LOCHI study seems to strongly indicate that the age at which you got a hearing aid or a cochlear implant strongly influences your future language abilities and reading abilities; and probably your educational outcome and attainment.

What about the other end of the spectrum – dealing with hearing loss in an ageing population?

Ageing populations are living longer with hearing loss that’s irreversible. It’s our single biggest sensory deficit, so it means we’re going to have to change the story. We have to move away from hearing impairment in its traditional sense of not being able to hear quiet sounds in quiet rooms, to a more functional definition – asking ourselves what hearing loss means to our day-to-day life.

It’s something that most countries don’t seem be prepared for, or willing to tackle. Professor Cath McMahon is carrying out an interesting study, together with international partners, looking at the different models for hearing healthcare around the world.  None of them are solving the adult hearing loss issue, or the mild to moderate hearing impairment issues.

The stigma around hearing loss – especially around wearing hearing aids, which are associated with looking old – stops many people from investigating their hearing health. And of course, those who do actually get hearing aids often end up chucking them in a drawer.  Because hearing aids don’t actually solve the problem.

We can solve the audibility problem by cranking up the sound, but it doesn’t make it any clearer to hear. Because you hear with your ears, but you listen with your brain. What’s feeding through from our ears to our brains is actually the issue we have to address.

So, the Hub is about brains as much as ears?

Definitely, and it’s one of the reasons why this building – with all these partners and departments working together – is making such a big impact. We’ve got colleagues from Cognitive Science, for example, helping us use infrared spectography – shining light into the head from outside – to measure the brain’s response to sound.  One of our PhD students, Amanda Fullerton, is using this technology with cochlear implant users, who we can’t use MRIs with.

And we’ve just started a world-first clinical trial to use gene therapy to augment cochlear implants – stimulating neurons to push them closer to the electrodes that will give the user better resolution.  It’s super cool stuff.

The Lighthouse marking Hearing Awareness Week with stories exploring our University’s impact on hearing health:

• Tuning out: Why do so many people switch off their hearing aids?
• Five things you can do to protect your hearing at any age
• There’s an app for that: the new ‘hearables’ changing the way we listen
• Global hearing report puts the focus on social inclusion
• Shouting to be heard: How noisy, everyday places harm our hearing
• Camp gives deaf children a rare opportunity to be together

(1) In a nutshell, my job is to…
To teach, research, and, as Director of the new Faculty of Human Sciences Multilingualism Research Centre, guide our team and make Macquarie University a recognised leader in research on multilingualism.

(2) The question I hear most often in my work is…
“Why is multilingualism important in this University?” A short answer is that Macquarie is situated in one of the most multilingual districts of Australia’s most multilingual city. Languages are everywhere we look, and a factor in every aspect of our lives.

(3) The thing I find most rewarding in my role is…
Learning more about the languages of Sydney and meeting the people who speak them.

(4) This year I want to…
It’s late in a busy year, so I am going to say, make it to the end!

(5) The bravest thing I’ve done is…
Sell up everything in Hong Kong five years ago and commit the last years of my career to Macquarie.

(6) A place that’s special to me is…
Manchester, where I grew up. I have been there only a few times since I left 40 years ago, but we now have a great collaboration going with the Multilingual Manchester research centre.

(7) My mother/father always told me…
My mother always told me to do whatever I wanted to do. I saw nothing unusual in that at the time, but now I know it had quite an impact.

 (8) My guilty pleasure…
Heavy metal gigs (said quietly).

(9) My hidden talent is…
I am a volunteer audiobook reader of public domain books for Librivox.org. I specialise in northern English dialect writing.

(10) I’m scared of…
What big business is doing to our climate.

Check out the Multilingualism Research Centre’s next event on Tuesday 8 October – Visual methodologies in multilingualism research – where Phil will presenting on how to conduct linguistic landscape research more systematically and discuss its significance for the study of multilingualism in urban life.

(1) In a nutshell, my job is to…
Discover aspects of how children aged 0 to 5 years learn to listen and speak the language(s) of their caregivers. My job is also to share the ins and outs of our theories and methods with students undertaking undergraduate, Master of Research, or PhD studies.

(2) The question I hear most often in my work is…
“Why is it so easy for a child to learn a language, while it’s so difficult for me?” One little piece of the puzzle may be that children spend a lot of time listening to infant-directed speech, whereas adult learners focus on speaking and don’t get the help from this special register.

(3) The thing I find most rewarding in my role is…
Helping students become independent researchers.

(4) This year I want to…
Sleep a minimum of eight hours every night (which is working wonders) and be able to do a full chin-up (which still requires a lot of practice).

(5) The bravest thing I’ve done is…
Move to Australia.

(6) A place that’s special to me is…
Amsterdam – where I was born, did all my growing-up and studies, and lived until I was 29. The longer I’m away, the more special it becomes.

(7) My mother/father always told me…
To eat well. In Dutch: “je moet goed eten”.

(8) My guilty pleasure…
Listening to Dutch pop music (in Dutch: “meezingers”, literally: sing-along-ers).

(9) My hidden talent is…
Doing little dance choreographies in lectures to give students extra mnemonics. I’m quite happy that the lectern recordings are audio only!

(10) A moment I’ll always remember…
When Katherine Demuth (my wonderful research mentor) asked me to become deputy-director of the Child Language Lab. It’s a great group of researchers and contributing to shaping all aspects of the lab is a very rewarding experience.

Annabelle is interested in contributing to a better public understanding about the nature and power of language. She has been interviewed on commercial and public radio, and has contributed a number of articles to The Conversation. 

 (1) In a nutshell, my job is to…
Inspire people to understand how central language is to every part of their lives.

(2) The question I hear most often in my work is…
Why can’t you give me simple rules for understanding grammar? Short answer: because grammar is the custodian of our cultural metaphysics (meaning ‘beyond physics’). This makes ‘rules’ completely the wrong metaphor for describing patterns in language.

(3) The thing I find most rewarding in my role is…
When students start to see how beautiful, how fascinating, and how powerful grammar is.

(4) This year I want to…
Read more poetry and fiction – literature is where we see the aesthetic potential of language. I’m also putting more time into improving my Spanish.

 (5) The bravest thing I’ve done is…
Giving birth. Honestly, it is not for the faint-hearted.

(6) My mother/father always told me…
My father always told me “the perfect is the enemy of the good”.

(7) My guilty pleasure is…
I don’t feel guilty over the things that give me pleasure. But like most working mothers, I am prone to feeling guilty about my children. I try not to indulge this cultural reflex – ever noticed we never speak of “working fathers”?

(8) I’m scared of…
The influence of big money in our political system.

(9) My hidden talent is…
I’m learning how to use my knowledge about language to be a good conversationalist with family members suffering dementia. (Linguistics comes in very handy!!)

(10) A moment I’ll always remember is…
When Colm Halbert (our former Faculty Research Manager) told me I’d been awarded an MQ Research Fellowship. It was a life-changing experience for me.

A new online portal designed to promote clear and effective communication, and to demystify technical language in medicine, law and other areas will be launched this Thursday, thanks to a new partnership between Macquarie and Canberra-based publisher Biotext.

As part of the new partnership, Biotext’s online Australian Manual of Scientific Style will transfer to a newly created portal on the University website. A suite of free online resources on language and style will also be there for professional writers and editors, and the general public.

This interactive portal – to be known as the Australian StyleHub – is the initiative of Emeritus Professor of Linguistics Pam Peters, who taught at Macquarie for 34 years. The launch of the StyleHub continues the University’s long tradition of creating authoritative references on Australian uses of language, notably the Macquarie Dictionary, on whose editorial committee Peters worked from 1986 to 2006. The Australian Style newsletter, founded by Peters in 1992, will go live on the StyleHub to report on language controversies and engage with readers in regular usage surveys.

“Scientific and stylish communication – the two come together in a newly forged partnership between Biotext and Macquarie University, with their strong track records in scientific publishing and in Australian language and style,” says Peters, who has contributed to several editions of the Australian Government Style Manual.

“The StyleHub will provide access to expert publications and research on how to communicate clearly and effectively through the internet.”

The StyleHub portal also gives access to specialised online dictionaries built at Macquarie on the TermFinder™ platform. These termbanks explain and illustrate the meanings of technical terms in areas such as family law, cancer medicine and accounting, to meet the needs of first- and second-language students and professional trainees.

“TermFinder termbanks are useful for writers and editors who work with technical terms, and members of the public who hear them and want somewhere to go to for an explanation,” says Prof Peters, who continues as a member of the ABC’s advisory committee on spoken language.

When it comes to recommendations on style, usage and accessibility, Biotext and Macquarie University both take seriously the need for empirical research. A series of studies by the Head of the Department of Linguistics, Professor Jan-Louis Kruger, is underway looking at how we access information on websites, and what is available to address the needs of those with disabilities.

‘Spotlight on …’  is our way of showcasing a department or faculty to increase engagement, cohesion and an understanding of who does what at Macquarie. This week, we talk to the team from the Language on the Move research group. 

Who are you? 

We are a team of Linguistics researchers in multilingualism, language learning and intercultural communication, led by Professor Ingrid Piller.

What do you do?

We examine multilingualism, language learning and intercultural communication in its social context. We are also passionate about disseminating our research and making it widely available through our blog http://www.languageonthemove.com/ and social media https://twitter.com/Lg_on_the_Move.

Why do you do it? 

Because of migration and globalisation, linguistic diversity is a fact of life. However, in traditionally monolingual societies we are poorly prepared to deal with linguistic diversity: our social and institutional arrangements are such that people from linguistically diverse backgrounds often face barriers to social goods such as education, employment, welfare and political participation. Research in linguistic diversity is therefore a social justice issue.

Who do you most frequently work with?

A big part of our work is Higher Degree Research. The team is dedicated to providing high quality MRes and PhD supervision, mentoring and peer support.

Our research usually takes us out into sites “in the real world” and we work with migrant families, schools and various work places – everywhere people need to use language to get things done and achieve their goals

What’s a recent achievement you’re proud of?

Our recent PhD graduate Shiva Motaghi-Tabari is the winner of this year’s Michael Clyne Prize!

The Michael Clyne Prize is awarded annually by the Australian Linguistics Society for the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact. Shiva receives the prize for her thesis about “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant families”.

This is the second time the award goes to a member of the Language on the Move research group. Donna Butorac won the 2012 Michael Clyne Prize for her thesis about “Imagined identity, remembered self: Settlement language learning and the negotiation of gendered subjectivity”. Furthermore, Vera Williams Tetteh’s thesis about “Language, Education and Settlement: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography on, with, and for Africans in Australia” was the runner-up for the 2016 award.

What’s planned for the future?

This year we’re pretty busy in terms of PhD graduations: two members of our team have just fulfilled all the requirements of their degree, two more are under examination and another one is due to submit later in the year.

There are some major publication outcomes to look forward to, including the second revised and expanded edition of Ingrid Piller’s book Intercultural Communication, which is due out from Edinburgh University Press in July. Ingrid and another team member, Alexandra Grey, are also busy finalising a four-volume collection devoted to Language and Globalization they are editing for Routledge.

We are also awaiting the outcome of two large funding applications currently under submission, but we are not going to say any more about that so as not to jinx our luck.

Where can we learn more?

Language on the Move or
Professor Ingrid Piller Department of Linguistics ingrid.piller@mq.edu.au

Some people think that language is all about communicating information. Nothing could be further from the truth: another important role of language is to build relationships. One type of communication that is almost exclusively geared towards establishing and maintaining relationships is small talk. That means small talk is much more than the exchange of platitudes it may seem. It’s actually an important form of social glue.

If you dread making small talk with (relative) strangers, consider these three tips:

Find common-ground topics

The weather makes a great small talk topic because everyone knows about it and is affected by it. However, unless you are chatting with a climate scientist, the weather probably will exhaust itself pretty quickly. When that happens, you want to move on to similar common-ground topics. Anything that is in your immediate physical or institutional environment is ideal. If that fails, topics from the media (news, sports, celebrities, TV shows, etc.) can be used to establish common ground.

Use open questions – sparingly

In order to establish common ground, you have to find out about the other person’s interests and concerns. The way to do that is to ask open-ended questions that allow your interlocutor to talk at some length rather than just respond with “yes/no” or a simple statement of fact. However, don’t go into interviewer mode without contributing about yourself. Remember the key to all relationships is reciprocity.

Be inclusive

Remember that event where you knew no one and were a complete outsider? And were tense and nervous and didn’t know how to start a conversation? And then the relief you felt when someone who seemed a member of the in-group came up to you and talked to you? The initiative of that stranger set you on a journey from becoming an outsider to an insider. Small talk is easier if you are insider and on your home turf. Now that you are established at Macquarie, be the kind of person who makes a point of starting a conversation with any shy newcomers.

Dr Teresa Ching from the Department of Linguistics and the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL), tells us more.

Early fitting or cochlear implantation is key to spoken language development in infants with hearing loss. Whereas children with profound hearing loss undoubtedly benefit from cochlear implants and get them early, it is currently not possible to accurately predict whether individual children with lesser hearing loss using hearing aids may benefit more from cochlear implants until signs of language delay are observed around 1-2 years of age.

Using the HEARLab system, clinicians already measure brainwaves of infants in response to speech sounds to identify whether hearing aids fitted to them are effective in making speech sounds audible.

This new development will measure brainwaves to tell us if a three-month-old baby wearing hearing aids hears that ‘see’ is different from ‘Sue’, or that ‘Sue’ is different from ‘shoe’ or ‘zoo.’ The brain responses to sound changes will either confirm that hearing aids are the best option for the infant or indicate that the child may be better served by cochlear implants.

By assessing an infant’s early discrimination ability in this way, clinicians will be able to identify infants who need cochlear implants when they are only a few months old so that families can be provided with the information to guide their decision on the best strategy to maximise outcomes for their children.

This is precisely what the ACORD test module in the HEARLab system will deliver. The software module will be developed by the HEARing CRC’s team at NAL, led by Teck Loi, Bram Van Dun, Fabric Bardy and Adjunct Professor Harvey Dillon, supported in part by the Medical Devices Fund grant.  The research and validation of ACORD involves myself, Bram Van Dun and Cara Wong at NAL, Professor Katherine Demuth in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie, and Associate Professor Gary Rance at Melbourne University, supported by an NHMRC grant.  Commercial implementation of new software modules in HEARLab is commercially managed by HEARworks, led by Professor Bob Cowan and Katarzyna D’Costa.