Merryn Davies-Deacon

I joined the French department at QUB in 2020, from a background in French, linguistics, and the Brythonic Celtic languages (specifically, Cornish and Breton). I am especially interested in language variation in terms of what it can tell us about the diverse range of backgrounds and beliefs that speakers bring to their communities: my interests include lexical and orthographic variation, the use of languages in online contexts, the use and representation of non-standard language varieties, and how language varieties are legitimated.

My first monograph, Breton in contemporary media: Speakers, language, community, was published by De Gruyter in 2024 and considers how the use of diverse linguistic variants (in this case, lexis) in Breton allows speakers both to express beliefs about the form and function the language should have, and to communicate with others who may have different opinions and experiences.

As one of a handful of neo-native speakers of revived Cornish, I am eager to encourage nuanced understanding of the small and complex Cornish language community. I am contributing editor for Cornish and Breton at The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, producing brief yearly summaries/reviews of publications in the field.

I am second supervisor on a PhD project examining language maintenance among Arabic speakers on the island of Ireland.

I teach French language and (socio)linguistics to undergraduate students, including:

• FRH1004 Beyond the Hexagon: use of French outside France, societal aspects of multilingualism, diglossia, linguistic insecurity, language minoritisation, language planning
• FRH2010 Linguistic Variation: diatopic linguistic variation in France, prestige and language attitudes, language standardisation, varieties of French and regional languages, language shift and revitalisation
• FRH3053 Current Issues in French Linguistics: links between linguistic and societal issues in French, linguistic purism and prescriptivism

At MA level, I convene and teach modules in sociolinguistics and research methods for data analysis in linguistics, and supervise dissertation work.

I became Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2023.

In semester 2 2024–5, I convene the modules FRH2010 and LNG7005. I am Examinations Liaison Officer for the Department of Languages, sit on the AEL ethics committee, and represent Northern Ireland on the executive committee of the University Council For Languages.