Wei wang

My research consists of three interrelated lines,

• Language use in social interaction

My first line of work draws on conversation analysis and functional linguistics to investigate how linguistic forms are used by speakers as resources to accomplish various social actions and achieve their interactional goals.

• Second language acquisition

Inspired and motivated by my language teaching experiences, my second line of research concerns second language learners’ development of interactional competence, i.e. speakers’ ability to organize social interactions—such as opening a conversation, repairing, and complaining—in mutually intelligible manners.

• Bilingual language development

Being a new mother, I have become increasingly interested in bilingualism and bilingual development of linguistic-minority children, in particular, code-switching, and seek to provide parents with insights on developmentally appropriate language input at home.