Wei wang
Assistant Professor in Chinese Language and Linguistics
Department of Modern & Classical Languages
University of Houston
Email: wwang49 (at) uh (dot) edu
Education
PhD in Chinese Linguistics, UCLA
MPhil in Linguistics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
BA in Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University
Areas of Expertise
Conversation Analysis
Bilingualism
Heritage Language Development
Second Language Acquisition
Chinese Language Pedagogy
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.