Research at the Department of English Language and ELT Methodology covers most areas and aspects of English, and all our projects together aspire to provide a coherent and comprehensive synchronic and diachronic description of the language. In addition to core disciplines (morphology and syntax), research interests revolve around lexicology and textual communication disciplines (linguistic stylistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis).
The principle underlying our research is that of applying a consistently contrastive view of English against a linguistic backdrop of Czech and simultaneously cultivating the linguistic and philological aims of research and instruction. A key feature – quite unique within the Czech Republic – of research carried out at the Department is the close interplay here between synchronic description (and language analysis), and diachronic and historical approaches.
The fundamental methodological starting point applied by the Department in its research projects is the modern-day form of the functional structuralism that was originally associated with the Prague School of Linguistics; at the same time the Department continues to respond to the latest major trends in linguistics and English studies worldwide, namely those in cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. Other resources for research material and methods include corpus and computational linguistics (work with monolingual and parallel corpora, including historical and learner corpora). The Department’s wider aim is to propagate direct links between research activities and teaching, including teacher training. This applies within all degree programmes (cf. above); our PhD doctoral degree programme in ELT, for example, includes academic training leading towards the production of experts in the field of language teaching.