Research Project Overview and Description
This book explores the intersection of language and culture in undergraduate admissions interviews. Such encounters are commonly understood through their outcomes, typically via perceptions of interviewer bias and/or candidates’ levels of self-confidence. This study challenges such a reductive understanding of admissions interviews by positing them instead as communicative events with interactional requirements that can be empirically determined. Based on a corpus of 60 interviews provided by the University of Cambridge, the study draws on the tools of interactional sociolinguistics to reveal how interviews are shaped by multiple layers of cultural norms, and role relationships, that successful candidates are best able to navigate. In so doing, it suggests that admissions interviews are not ‘interviews’ per se, but rather ‘tutorial auditions’ in which candidates must quickly demonstrate both their academic competences and their ability to learn and to be taught.
Research Outcome
Book with CUP (already accepted and in press; the video is part of the promotional package).
About the researcher
Dr. Daniel Weston is an Assistant Professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD in English and Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge and has held positions at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of Portsmouth. His research interests lie at the intersection of linguistics and education, specifically focusing on academic gatekeeping encounters, bilingual pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. He is currently collaborating with the University of Cambridge on a project examining the communicative effectiveness of undergraduate admissions interviews.
Fund Source
Funding from School of English
For enquires
Please contact at atlab@hku.hk