糖心原创

School of English

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Louise Mullany

Professor in Sociolinguistics, Faculty of Arts

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Biography

I have conducted research on professional communication with a range of national and multinational organisations for the past 25+ years. I am the Founder and Director of Linguistic Profiling for Professionals, an innovative research-based consultancy and business unit based in the Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics at The 糖心原创.

I was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's medal in 2024 for leading work on embedding and implementing change to recruitment practices at the 糖心原创 and other organisations. I was recipient of a Times Higher Education Award for 'Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community' in 2021 with Professor Loretta Trickett at NTU, for our work with Nottinghamshire Police, the Police and Crime Commissioner's Office and Nottingham Women's Centre on women and hate crime, the findings of which have influenced crucial amendments to government bills and the work of the Women and Equalities Select Committee.

I have recently published Polite: The Art of Communication at Home, at Work and in Public with Welbeck/Hachette (2024). Polite is a mass market publication designed to bring politeness theory and approaches to a popular audience. I have been a guest speaker, interviewee and podcaster at numerous book festivals and international events in the last 12 months talking about the book.

I have long-standing expertise in business communication, health communication, digital communication and the language of politics, including global issues of equality, inclusion and disadvantage. I have published extensively in these areas.

Expertise Summary

BA, MA, PhD Areas of expertise - sociolinguistics; discourse analysis; pragmatics; business communication; health communication; political communication; language and inequality; language and discrimination

Research Summary

My main areas of research are sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics, including politeness theory. I am particularly interested in investigating professional communication and I have… read more

Recent Publications

  • OZINANAIR, O and MULLANY, L., 2025. Professional Identity Construction in Women鈥檚 Football Discourse: Language, Gender, Self-Branding, and Sporting Social Media Celebrity. In: CALDWELL, D., FILE, K. and PATTERSON, L., eds., The Handbook of Language in Sports Bloomsbury. 25pp (In Press.)
  • CORDELL, J. and MULLANY, L., 2025. Using corpus linguistics to address workplace inequalities: A framework for equality, diversity and inclusion in professional communication. In: MAHLBERG, M. and BROOKES, G., eds., The Handbook of Corpus Linguistics Bloomsbury. (In Press.)
  • CHA艁UPNIK, M., MACKENZIE, J., MULLANY, L. and VILAR-LLUCH, S., 2024. Critical Discourse Studies. 1-19
  • MULLANY, L., 2024. London: Welbeck/Hachette.

Current Research

My main areas of research are sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics, including politeness theory. I am particularly interested in investigating professional communication and I have conducted research and consultancies in a wide range of businesses, healthcare settings and organisations nationally and internationally. I am particularly focused on how linguistics can be used to bring positive changes to workplace communication practices, as well as in politics, healthcare and sport.

I am the Founder and Director of , a research and business unit running since 2015, using linguistics research to investigate a wide range of communication issues in the workplace including language and equality, the language of effective leadership, health communication and digital communication.

I was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's medal in 2024 for leading work on embedding and implementing change to recruitment practices at the 糖心原创 and other organisations. With Professor Loretta Trickett, we won a Times Higher Education Award for 'Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community' for our work with Nottinghamshire Police, the Police and Crime Commissioner's Office and Nottingham Women's Centre on hate crime, the findings of which have influenced amendments to government bills and the work of the Women and Equalities Select Committee.

I have recently published Polite: The Art of Communication at Home, at Work and in Public with Welbeck/Hachette (2024). Polite is a trade publication designed to bring politeness theory and approaches to a mass audience. It covers the crucial and often hidden role that politeness plays in our everyday lives, including with families and friends, in the workplace, in politics and during our leisure activities including sport. I have been a guest speaker and interviewee at numerous book festivals and international events in the last 12 months talking about the book.

I am a regular media speaker and I have appeared on various media outlets in recent years discussing politeness, apologies, the language of hate crime, and language and identity including BBC 6 O'clock News, BBC Radio 4's Start the Week, Women's Hour, and Word of Mouth with Michael Rosen, as well as locally with Notts TV and BBC Radio Nottingham. I have been commissioned to write op eds for the national news media including The Independent, as well as writing for The Conversation. My research findings from various language and identity projects have appeared in a number of national online news media including The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and Bloomberg business news.

Current projects include a , funded by the UK government's Innovate UK stream, with national law firm Browne Jacobson. We are partners in developing products to bring cultural change to the world of law and client bases in financial services, health, government, the corporate sector and education through a focus on sustainability, diversity and inclusion.

Recent projects also include the interdisciplinary EPSRC-funded project, where we researched and re-wrote recruitment and promotions materials to enable more diverse pools of candidates to be recruited and rewarded appropriately. I have also recently published collaboratively on digital communication including in politics, the workplace and sport with numerous colleagues. I also led a Research England project with Professor Lucy Jones to investigate government communications with young people and how communication strategies have changed for charities and NGOs working with members of Generation Z who were at risk during and post Covid-19.

I have also recently been PI on an AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Networks award, working with academics, NGOs and charities in East Africa on empowering women and girls by creating and running the Language, Gender and Leadership Network, with Dr Masibo Lumala (Moi University, Kenya) and the Institute for Social Transformation, Uganda.

I am presently supervising PhD students in the areas of professional communication, workplace communication, language and identity studies, including gender and social class, linguistic pragmatics, including politeness, the language of discrimination, bias, and hate speech, political discourse analysis, digital communication, media discourse. I welcome PhD applications in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics.

  • OZINANAIR, O and MULLANY, L., 2025. Professional Identity Construction in Women鈥檚 Football Discourse: Language, Gender, Self-Branding, and Sporting Social Media Celebrity. In: CALDWELL, D., FILE, K. and PATTERSON, L., eds., The Handbook of Language in Sports Bloomsbury. 25pp (In Press.)
  • CORDELL, J. and MULLANY, L., 2025. Using corpus linguistics to address workplace inequalities: A framework for equality, diversity and inclusion in professional communication. In: MAHLBERG, M. and BROOKES, G., eds., The Handbook of Corpus Linguistics Bloomsbury. (In Press.)
  • CHA艁UPNIK, M., MACKENZIE, J., MULLANY, L. and VILAR-LLUCH, S., 2024. Critical Discourse Studies. 1-19
  • MULLANY, L., 2024. London: Welbeck/Hachette.
  • OZINANAIR, O and MULLANY, L., 2024. #stillwerise: The sociolinguistics of race, inequalities, and athlete activist identities in Formula 1 social media. In: FILE, K. and SCHNURR, S., eds., The Language of Inclusion and Exclusion in Sports. Mouton de Gruyter. 43-64
  • MULLANY, L. and HOWARD, V., 2023. . In: HANDFORD, M. and GEE, J. P., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis 2nd Edition. Routledge. 545-565
  • ZOTTOLA, A, JONES, L., MULLANY, L. and PILNICK, A, 2023. 鈥淚 got confused when they said 鈥榶ou鈥檙e a girl鈥欌��: Trans men鈥檚 life histories and the regulation of gender. In: BROOKES, G and CHALUPNIK, M., eds., Masculinities and the Discourses of Men's Health, Masculinities and Discourses of Men's Health. Palgrave. 249-271.
  • JONES, L., CHA艁UPNIK, M., MACKENZIE, J. and MULLANY, L., 2022. Discourse, Context & Media. 47, 100596
  • MULLANY, L and SCHNURR, S., eds., 2022. New York: Routledge.
  • MULLANY, L and SCHNURR, S, 2022. Globalisation, Geopolitics and Gender: Key Issues for Professional Communication. In: Globalisation, Geopolitics and Gender in Professional Communication New York: Routledge. 1-20
  • MULLANY, L. and LUMALA, P. M, 2022. Narratives of Identity and Gendered Leadership in East African Workplaces: Intersectionality, global development goals and challenging boundaries. In: Globalisation, Geopolitics and Gender in Professional Communication Routledge: New York. 67-85
  • ZOTTOLA, A, JONES, L, PILNICK, A and MULLANY, L, 2021. Health Expectations. 24(2), 719-727
  • EMERSON, T, HARRINGTON, L, MULLANY, L, ATKINS, S, CHURCHILL, D, WINTER, R and RAKESH PATEL, 2020. . In: ARCHER, D, GRAINGER, K and JAGODZI艃SKI, P, eds., Politeness in Professional Contexts John Benjamins. 25-54
  • MULLANY, LJ, ed., 2020. Springer Palgrave.
  • MULLANY, L and TRICKETT, L, 2020. . In: MULLANY, L, ed., Professional Communication: Consultancy, Advocacy, Activism Springer Palgrave. 249-272
  • LUMALA, M and MULLANY, L, 2020. . In: MULLANY, L, ed., Professional Communication:: Consultancy, Advocacy, Activism Springer Palgrave. 65-88
  • MULLANY, L, 2020. . In: MULLANY, L, ed., Professional Communication: Consultancy, Advocacy, Activism Springer Palgrave. 1-26
  • BROOKES, G, HARVEY, K and MULLANY, L, 2018. From corpus to clinic: health communication research and the impact agenda. In: MCINTYRE, D and PRICE, H, eds., Applying Linguistics: Language and the Impact Agenda Routledge.
  • CHRISTIE, C, MULLANY, L and CHALUPNIK, M, 2017. Gender and (im)politeness. In: CULPEPER. J, HAUGH, M and KADAR, D, eds., Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness Basingstoke: Palgrave.
  • MULLANY, L. and YOONG, M, 2017. Gender and the Workplace. In: VINE, B, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace Routledge.
  • MULLANY, L, BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, F and MILLS, S, 2017. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture. 13(1), 1-6.
  • MULLANY, L and YOONG, M, 2016. Language, gender and identities in political life: A Case study from Malaysia. In: PREECE, S, ed., Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity Routledge. 428-442
  • BROOKES, G., HARVEY, K. and MULLANY, L., 2016. Gender & Language. 10(3), 340-363.
  • JONES, L. and MULLANY, L., 2016. International Journal of Transgenderism.
  • SMITH, C. ADOLPHS, S. HARVEY, K. MULLANY, L., 2015. Spelling Errors and Keywords in Born-Digital Data: A Case 糖心原创 Using the Teenage Health Freak Corpus. Corpora. 9(2), 137-154
  • MULLANY, L. STOCKWELL, P., 2015. Introducing English Language. Second Edition. Routledge.
  • MULLANY, L, HARVEY, K, SMITH, C. and ADOLPHS, S., 2015. "Am I anorexic?" Weight, eating and discourses of the body in online adolescent communication. Communication and Medicine. 12(2-3), 211-223.
  • HARVEY, K., LOCHER, M. AND MULLANY, L. J., 2013. Linguistik Online. 59,
  • MULLANY, L. J, 2012. Corpus analysis of language in the workplace. In: CHAPELLE, C., ed., Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics Wiley-Blackwell.
  • ADOLPHS, S, MULLANY, L., HARVEY, K. and SMITH, C., 2012. Available at: <http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cral/projects/thfindex.aspx>
  • ADOLPHS, S., MULLANY, L., HARVEY, K. and SMITH, C., 2012. Available at: <http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cral/projects/thfencyclopedia.aspx>
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2011. Discourse, gender and professional communication. In: GEE, J. and HANDFORD, M, eds., The Handbook of Discourse Analysis London: Routledge. 509-522
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2011. Frontstage and backstage: Gordon Brown, the 鈥渂igoted woman鈥� and im/politeness in the 2010 UK General Election. In: LINGUISTIC POLITENESS RESEARCH GROUP, ed., Discursive approaches to politeness De Gruyter Mouton. 133-165
  • MILLS, S and MULLANY, L.J., 2011. Language, gender and feminism: theory, methodology and practice Routledge.
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2011. Im/politeness, rapport management and workplace culture: Truckers performing masculinities on Canadian ice-roads. In: BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, F and KADAR, D., eds., Politeness Across Cultures Basingstoke: Palgrave. 61-84
  • LINGUISTIC POLITENESS RESEARCH GROUP, ed., 2011. Discursive Approaches to Politeness Mouton de Gruyter.
  • MULLANY, L. J. & STOCKWELL, P.J., 2010. Introducing English Language: A Resource Book for Students London: Routledge.
  • MULLANY, L., 2010. Gendered identities in the professional workplace: negotiating the glass ceiling. In: LLAMAS, C. and WATT, D., eds., Language and identities Edinburgh University Press. 179-191
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2010. Gender and interpersonal pragmatics. In: GRAHAM, S. L and LOCHER, M., eds., The Handbook of Interpersonal Pragmatics Mouton de Gruyter. 225-250
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2009. Gender studies and business discourse.. In: BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, F., ed., The Handbook of Business Discourse. Edinburgh University Press. 213-225
  • MULLANY L. J. (ED.), 2009. Special Issue Guest Editor: Politeness in Health Care Settings Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture. 5(1),
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2009. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture. 5(1), 1-10
  • HARVEY, K., CHURCHILL, D., CRAWFORD, P., BROWN, B., MULLANY, L., MACFARLANE, A. and MCPHERSON, A., 2008. Family Practice. 25, 1-18
  • MULLANY, L., 2008. Negotiating methodologies: making language and gender relevant in the professional workplace. In: HARRINGTON, K., LITOSSELITI, L., SAUNTSON, H. and SUNDERLAND, J., eds., Gender and language research methodologies Palgrave.
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2008. "Stop hassling me!": Impoliteness, power and gender identity in the professional workplace.. In: BOUSFIELD, D and LOCHER, M., eds., Impoliteness in Language Mouton de Gruyter. 231-255
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2007. Gendered discourse in the professional workplace Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • LLAMAS, C. and MULLANY, L. J. & STOCKWELL, P.J., eds., 2007. The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics London: Routledge.
  • MULLANY, L. J., 2007. Speech communities. In: LLAMAS, C, MULLANY, L and STOCKWELL, P., eds., The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics Routledge. 84-92.
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2006. Journal of Politeness Research. 2(1), 55-77
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2006. Narrative constructions of gender and professional identities. In: OMONIYI, T. and WHITE, G., eds., The Sociolinguistics of Identity London: Continuum. 157-172
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2006. Language and gender in the workplace (with L. Litosseliti). In: LITOSSELITI, L., ed., Gender and Language: Theory and Practice London : Hodder Arnold.
  • HARRIS, S, K. GRAINGER and L. MULLANY, 2006. Discourse & Society. 17(6), 715-737
  • BROWN, B, CRAWFORD, P and MULLANY, L, 2005. Clinical governmentality: A critical linguistic perspective on clinical governance discourse in health care organisations Journal of Applied Linguistics. 2(3), 299-324
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2005. Review of Mills' "Gender and Politeness" Journal of Politeness Research. 1(2), 291-295
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2004. Language and Literature. 13(4), 291-305
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2004. Multilingua. VOL 23(PART 1/2), 13-38
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2004. An examination of the discourse strategies of female and male chairs in managerial business meetings. In: GOUVEIA, C., SILVESTRE, C. and AZUAGA, L., eds., Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise: Linguistic Perspectives Lisbon : ULICES (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies).
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2002. 'I don't think you want me to get a word in edgeways do you John?': Re-assessing (im)politeness, language and gender in political broadcast interviews. English Studies Working Papers on the Web: Sheffield Hallam University. 3,
  • MULLANY, L.J., 2000. The application of current language and gender theory to managerial meeting discourse The Nottingham Linguistic Circular. 15, 1-13
  • MULLANY, L.J., 1999. Linguistic politeness and sex differences in BBC Radio 4 broadcast interviews Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics. 7, 119-142
  • SMITH, C., ADOLPHS, S., HARVEY, K. and MULLANY, L, Spelling Errors and Keywords in Born-Digital Data: A Case 糖心原创 Using the Teenage Health Freak Corpus. Corpora. 9 (2), (In Press.)
  • BROOKS, G, HARVEY, K and MULLANY, L., Gender and Language. (In Press.)
  • JONES, L, The problematic case of gender-neutral pronouns: A response to "A Modest Proposal"
  • JONES, L., CHALUPNIK, M. and MACKENZIE, J., Sarah Everard Discourse Context and Media.

School of English

Trent Building
The 糖心原创
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 951 5900
email: english-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk