Billy Clark

Professor Billy Clark leads research in linguistics at Northumbria University. His research interests include aspects of linguistic semantics, pragmatics (a field which focuses on language usage in context), prosodic meaning (how the tune and rhythm of speech contributes to meaning), stylistics (a field which links literary criticism to linguistics), multimodal meaning and semantic change (how the meaning of words and the way they are used changes over time) – all of which share a focus on aspects of linguistic and non-linguistic meaning.

He has been involved in several projects which focus on the relationships between activities at school and at university, including the United Kingdom Linguistics Olympiad and the Integrating English project. With the Integrating English team, he runs The Definite Article for AQA (an awarding body offering GCSE, AS and A Level qualifications), a website which offers research digests and other resources for teachers.