Fiction

My short stories are published in my fourth book, a collection called 'Sting in the Tale' - seven stories with twist endings. The book is available on Amazon Kindle. All my books - both academic and fiction - can be found by going to Amazon here: Amazon.co.uk

Music

My interests also include movies and music, having written a 007 theme song entitled 'The Man Everybody Wants', which Desmond 'Q' Llewelyn said was 'very much in the Bond tradition' and Bond authors Philip Lisa and Lee Pfeiffer (The Incredible World of 007) said the song had 'good potential' and was 'definitely in the style of the early Bond songs'.The song's music video has been performed at several Bond conventions in the US and UK, to include locations such as New Orleans, London and Long Beach, California. The song is also included in the John Cork collection housed at the University of Southern California archives, with Cork a member of the Ian Fleming Foundation. The song is housed in Box 34, Folder 13. The website can be found here: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8pz5bbw/entire_text/

The music videos for both songs can be found at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT2-0WGsV5U

Musicals

Details at http://www.doollee.com & www.americanmusicals.com

• Love from Above - performed in 1991 and 1998 at the Mayflower Club in North Hollywood, California (http://mayflowerclub.com/)
• Between Two Wars
• Only in LA

Media Coverage on Accent and Identity

From 2014-2017, I was interviewed by more than 40 radio stations (e.g. BBC Merseyside, BBC Manchester, BBC Cumbria, BBC West Midlands, BBC Ulster); I appeared in foreign media (Canada, Ireland, Italy, South Korea and Finland); I was featured in more than 30 newspapers/news websites; and I was interviewed on TV: BBC Northwest Tonight (July 8th, 2014), Russia Today (RT) in both 2014 and 2015; BBC Breakfast (May 13th, 2016); and Sky News TV (February 22nd, 2018). Please go to the media contributions and coverage section of my website to find a very brief sample of some of my media exposure. 

Here is a link to my BBC 5 radio interview in April 2018: https://twitter.com/bbc5live/status/982284695080656896

On November 23rd 2018, I was interviewed twice by BBC Radio Kent, discussing my previous media comment (Metro, April 5th 2018) that 'old linguistic habits die hard in the UK'. 

Below is a link to my interview with BBC Radio Five on May 7th 2019:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3zg51jqSv7d2PFvs44qBsyJ/have-you-ever-changed-your-accent-to-fit-in

Here is a link to my interview with The Know Show: Dr. Alex Baratta - Perceptions of accents in UK education | Acaudio

Here is a link to my podcast interview with The Bunker: The Bunker: Why accents speak louder than words on Apple Podcasts

Keynote Speaker

I presented a talk as an invited keynote speaker at the University of Sheffield's Linguistic Prejudice conference from July 9th - July 10th 2018:

• I presented my paper at the Variation and Language Processing conference at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, from January 23 - January 25 2019. The paper focuses on the linguistic processing of accents in Educational contexts, adopting a psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic hybrid approach.
• I presented my paper at the RELC conference, held in Singapore from March 11 - March 13 2019. My paper focuses on the content of my third book, which explains how non-inner circle Englishes (e.g. Indian English) can be used to teach the inner circle standard.
• My paper on military impoliteness has been accepted for the The 12th International Conference on (Im)politeness, to be held at Anglia Ruskin University, July 17 - 19 2019.

New Books

My third book, World Englishes in English Language Teaching, was published in 2019 with Palgrave Macmillan. A link to the book is here: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783030132859

My fifth and sixth books are published on Amazon Kindle, consisting of two academic writing study skills guides:

Academic writing goes to the movies: Getting critical in your essays

A guide to academic writing in Britain

All my book profiles can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=alex+baratta&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss

My seventh book will come out in March 2020 - Read Critically - published by SAGE. The link is here:

https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/read-critically/book271912

Creative Imagery spotlight

My research was selected, along with twelve other academics at the University of Manchester, for recognition for academic excellence and innovation. Read about it here: 

https://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/research/showcase/alex-baratta/

New for 2020

My work as a consultant with the major language-learning app, Babbel, has led to much media attention, in the UK, Italy and the US, including publications such as GQ Italia, People magazine and Language magazine. My research also came eighth in ‘2019's top news from the Faculty of Humanities’: 

https://www.google.com/search?q=alex+baratta&rls=com.microsoft:en-GB:IE-Address&rlz=1I7NDKB_enGB561&tbm=nws&ei=uhUuXp-GH5G11fAP_cybQA&start=0&sa=N&ved=0ahUKEwify7SYq6LnAhWRWhUIHX3mBgg4ChDy0wMIWg&biw=1366&bih=651&dpr=1#spf=1580078637195

I also won the SAGE prize for Innovation and Excellence for my publication in 2019 in Sociological Research Online: 

https://www.britsoc.co.uk/opportunities/sage-prize-for-innovationexcellence/

In 2021, I have books nine and ten on their way - one focused on critical reading and writing (published by SAGE), and the other book focused on Korean English (published by Bloomsbury).

Please feel free to contact me to discuss ideas for supervision or to discuss joint research.

Taking my Research on the Road

For more than ten years, I have hosted visiting schoolchildren, as well as visiting schools, in order to give talks regarding accent and identity, to include the implications for regional accents in the workplace. I also give talks to public organisations (e.g. the ArcSpace organisation in Hulme), as well as the public themselves (e.g. as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, 2016). Please feel free to contact me should you wish me to visit your organisation to provide a talk on accent and the workplace, in order to provide information on the ways in which accent preference - and prejudice - is still a live issue.

Educational Background

AA in Music - Los Angeles Valley College

TESOL certificate - Canadian Global TESOL Training Institute

BA in English Literature - California State University, Northridge

MA in English Composition and Rhetoric - California State University, Northridge

MA in Linguistics - The University of Manchester

PhD in English - The University of Manchester

Teaching

Intercultural Learning

Language Acquisition at Home and School

Key Issues in English Language and Education

PhD Supervision

I would be happy to supervise PhD students with interests in the following broad areas:

Accent/dialect/language and identity

Intercultural communication

World Englishes

My research interests are framed within the broad areas of linguistic rights; linguistic prejudice; and language and identity.

My research interests are largely focused on sociolinguistics (the relationship between language and identity/linguistic rights/linguistic prejudice), pragmatics (intercultural communication) and academic writing from a variety of perspectives, such as the ways that students reveal personal identity in their essays and the linguistic features used to perform this function.I am also a Fellow of the UK's Higher Education Academy, a member of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) and the Golden Key International Honour Society, in addition to serving on the editorial board for the Journal of Language Teaching and Research, as well as having been invited to review papers for several other prestigious journals.

Funding

2006-2012: £5165 in funding for three pedagogical projects focused on academic writing: the use of visual pedagogy to teach academic writing; a discussion of the development of an undergraduate student's academic writing throughout a degree programme; and ways in which the services of a writng centre can be improved.

2014: £1261 from the Research and Impact Stimulation Fund, focusing on accent and identity in teacher trainees.

2014: £5000 from the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), for a project investigating religious and academic identity in university students.

2015: £10,190 from the Social Responsibility fund, to continue the study on religion and identity in Higher Education.

2016: £500 from the ESRC to hold an event as part of the Festival of Social Science.

2017: £19,750 from the University of Manchester Research Institute, Pump Priming, to investigate the role that accent plays in mate selection.

2019:  £240.80 from the 'Enhancement of Student Satisfaction and Experience' fund. The project is entitled 'Addressing Academic Culture Shock for Chinese Students'.

I also received funding for £226.02 to present at the ESRC's Festival of Social Science, a presentation entitled 'The English language does not belong to just the English: A discussion of World Englishes in society'

2021 - £3500 awarded from the New Horizons fund, for a project which investigates evidence of China English in students' academic writing

2022 - £800 awarded from the Social Responsibility Catalyst Fund for an outreach project focused on developing high school students' critical thinking skills, entitled 'let's get critical' 

Writing Centre

I run a SEED-level writing centre, 'Write Away', as well as offering several study skills sessions on various subjects (e.g. how to be critical). Both of these endeavours run throughout the school year.

Will the real me please stand up? The relationship between accent and identity

My research continues to be informed by the ways in which our language use - be it language per se (e.g. Afrikaans to Albanian), dialect or accent - helps to shape, reinforce and conceptualise our identity. Likewise, we need to consider the ways in which our language use leads to others ascribing identities to us, some not always welcomed. This is the crux of linguistic stereotyping.

Inherently, no accent (or language) is 'good', 'bad', 'sexy', 'ugly' and so on. This is nonsensical. However, we know that values are ascribed to certain accents, both positive and negative. Accent, and language in general, serves as a proxy for larger social identities, such as race, class and regional origin. Thus, if a certain region is stigmatised, then this applies to the accent/language which derives from said region and ultimately, the values are placed on to the speaker.

So....any accents you do or do not like? Do you have any personal tales to tell? If so, you can post them on my website: www.accentpride.co.uk.

You can also vist my blogs:

http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/british_politics/2017/06/putting-an-accent-on-things-the-need-to-clarify-speech-expectations-for-british-teachers/

https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/clarifying-accent-standards-for-british-teachers

2017

A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF MULTI-WORD UNITS IN L1 AND L2 NOVICE ACADEMIC WRITING

Author: Candarli, D. (December 2017)

Supervisor: Jones, S. (Supervisor) & Baratta, A. (Supervisor)

UoM administered thesis: Phd