Photo of Rachelle Vessey

Rachelle Vessey

Assistant Professor (ALDS); Assistant Director (ALDS)

Degrees:B.A. (French, Mount Allison University), M.A. (Applied Language Studies, Carleton University), Ph.D. (Linguistics, University of London)
Email:rachelle.vessey@carleton.ca

Biography

Rachelle Vessey is an Assistant Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University. Her research centres on beliefs about language (language ideologies) and how these manifest in discourse (specifically: newspapers, digital communication, language policy texts, and spoken discourse).  She is particularly interested in how beliefs about language contribute to social inclusion and exclusion, especially in national contexts. She has examined language ideologies in large corpora of (English and French) Canadian newspapers, online forums, interviews with domestic workers, United Nations official documents and extremist magazines.

Research interests

Language ideologies, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, French, media discourse, Canadian studies

Recent research grants

  • (2019-2020) Research Innovation Grant (Birkbeck, University of London). £4110 Domestic workers in family language planning: The role of language and gender ideologies.

Selected peer-reviewed publications

Books

  • Baker, P., McEnery, T. and Vessey, (forthcoming 2020). The language of violent jihad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Vessey, R. (2016) Language and Canadian media: Representations, ideologies, policies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Book chapters

  • Vessey, R. (2018) Language policy and planning and the Olympic Games. In A. Blackledge and A. Creese (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity (pp. 227-240). London: Routledge.
  • Vessey, R. (2018) Language policy and the media. In C. M. Cotter and D. Perrin (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Language and Media (pp. 329-342). London: Routledge.

Articles

  • Vessey, R. and Sheyholislami, J. (2020). Language ideological debates about linguistic landscapes: The case of Chinese signage in Richmond, Canada. Journal of Language and Politics. 
  • McEntee-Atalianis, L. and Vessey, R. (2020). The United Nations’ General Debates on Language(s) and Multilingualism: A corpus-assisted analysis of member states’ agency. Language Policy. Epub ahead of print.
  • Vessey, R. (2019). Domestic work = language work? Language and gender ideologies in the marketing of multilingual domestic workers in London. Gender & Language, 13(3), 314-338.
  • Baker, J. P. and Vessey, R. (2018).  A corpus-driven comparison of English and French Islamist extremist texts. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 3(1), 255-278.
  • Vessey, R. (2018) Language policy and the media. In C. M. Cotter and D. Perrin (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Language and Media (pp. 329-342). London: Routledge.
  • Vessey, R. (2017) Representations of language education in English and French Canadian newspapers. Canadian Modern Language Review, 73 (2), 158-182.
  • Vessey, R. (2017) Corpus approaches to language ideology. Applied Linguistics, 38 (3), 277-296.
  • Vessey, R. (2016) Language ideologies in social media: the case of Pastagate. Journal of Language and Politics, 15 (2), 1-24.
  • Vessey, R. (2015) Food fight: moral panic in news and social media concerning ‘pastagate’. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 10 (2), 253-271.
  • MacDonald, M., Homolar, A., Rethel, L., Schnurr, S. and Vessey, R. (2015) Manufacturing Dissent: the discursive formation of nuclear proliferation (2006-2012). Discourse & Communication, 9 (2), 173-197.
  • Vessey, R. (2014) Borrowed words, mock language, and nationalism in Canada. Language and Intercultural Communication, 14 (2), 176-190.
  • Vessey, R. (2013) Too much French? Not enough French? The Vancouver Olympics and a very Canadian language ideological debate. Multilingua, 32 (5), 659-682.
  • Vessey, R. (2013) Challenges in cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse studies. Corpora, 8 (1), 1-26.
  • Freake [previous surname], R., Gentil, G. & Sheyholislami, J. (2011) A bilingual corpus-assisted discourse study of the construction of nationhood and belonging in Quebec. Discourse & Society, 22(11), 21-47.

Selected presentations

Conference plenaries 

  • (2019) ILPE 4 – Les idéologies linguistiques dans la presse écrite: l’exemple des langues romanes. University of Messina, Italy.
  • (2018) From cross-cultural to superdiverse corpus linguistics: language ideologies and communities. IVACS (Inter-varietal applied corpus studies) Conference. University of Malta Valletta Campus.
  • (2018) Language ideological practices online: exploring Canada’s ‘two solitudes’ in the digital age. BAAL Language and New Media SIG. The Open University.

Peer-reviewed presentations

  • (2020) Language ideologies and Canadian bilingualism: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of tweets during the 2019 general election. Le bilinguisme et au-delà : Faire avancer la réflexion sur les pédagogies, les politiques et les pratiques. University of Ottawa. (Conference cancelled).
  • (2020) Language practices and ideologies in online communication: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of tweets during the 2019 Canadian general election. BAAL Language Policy SIG. University of Cambridge. (Conference cancelled).
  • (2020) Theorising corpus absence in a language policy context: identifying benign neglect in the United Nations (1970-2016). Corpora and Discourse conference. University of Sussex.
  • (2019) (With Lisa McEntee-Atalianis) Agency & nexus of influence on LPP at the United Nations (1970-2016): A corpus-assisted analysis. Multidisciplinary Approaches in Language Policy and Planning. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
  • (2018) French and English language ideological debates in Canada: Evidence and examples from the media. Language and identity in Francophone Canada. Institute of Modern Languages Research/School of Advanced Study, University of London.
  • (2018) (With Paul Baker) Cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse studies: Identifying similarities and differences by comparing thematic categories of words across languages. Corpora and Discourse Conference. University of Lancaster. (2018) (With Lisa McEntee-Atalianis) Language Policy & Diplomacy: A Diachronic Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of the United Nations’ General Debates on Language(s) and Multilingualism. BAAL Language Policy SIG. Sheffield Hallam University.
  • (2018) Language and gender ideologies in the marketing of multilingual domestic workers in London. Communication in the Multilingual City. University of Birmingham.
  • (2017) French as a gendered commodity in domestic spaces: Language ideologies and the market for French-speaking au pairs and nannies. Association for French Language Studies. Glendon College, Toronto, Canada.
  • (2017) Introduction and conclusion. Corpus Linguistics in the South 14: Corpus Linguistics and Multilingualism. Birkbeck, University of London.
  • (2015) English and French language ideologies, hashtags, and Canadian federal party leaders: The language politics of Twitter in Canada. 6th International Language in the Media Conference. University of Hamburg.
  • (2015) Corpus linguistics and superdiversity. Workshop in “Topics in Corpus Linguistics for Social Media Research”. Corpus Linguistics 2015. University of Lancaster.
  • (2015) Multilingualism and the language politics of Twitter in Canada. Multilingualism in a Digital Age. University of Reading.
  • (2015) Language policy and language rights online: Language ideologies in Canadian Federal Party Leaders’ Tweets. AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguistics) and ACLA/CAAL (Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics) Joint Conference. Toronto, Canada.