LINGUIST List 10.988

Fri Jun 25 1999

Jobs: Lang Science, Genre & Multimodality

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Karla McGregor, Language Science position at Northwestern University
2. John Bateman, Researcher/Communicator: Genre and Layout in Multimodal Documents

Position Announcement

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Northwestern University

Position: Assistant Professor

Appointment: Full-time, nine-month, tenure track

Starting Date: September 1, 2000

Duties: Responsibilities include conducting research in areas of interest,
teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, as well as directing student
research and advising graduate and undergraduate students.

Qualifications: Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, Cognitive
Science/Neuroscience/Psychology or related area required. Applicants must
have demonstrated expertise in experimental approaches to semantic and/or
syntactic processing. Individuals with interests in either child or adult
language processing are encouraged to apply. Preference will be given to
candidates with research interests that mesh with those of the current
faculty, in particular those whose work has implications for language
disorders.

Salary: Competitive, depending on qualifications and experience.

Application procedure: The application should include a cover letter, CV
(indicating an e-mail address), statements of research and teaching
interests, reprints, and three letters of reference sent directly to the
search committee by the application deadline. Send all materials to:

Karla K. McGregor, Ph.D.
Search Committee Chair
Speech and Language Pathology
2299 North Campus Drive
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208-3570

E-mail: k-mcgregornwu.edu

Closing date: Consideration of applications will begin December 3, 1999 and
continue until the position is filled.

Northwestern University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity
Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Hiring is
contingent upon eligibility to work in the United States.


- 
Karla Mcgregor
Northwestern University
k-mcgregornwu.edu

We are seeking a Researcher/Communicator to join our team on the
ESRC-funded project Genre and Multimodality (GeM): a computer model of
genre in document layout. The post will be based at the University of
Stirling, but the project is a collaboration with John Bateman
(University of Bremen) and Patrick Allen (University of East
London). The post is fixed-term for 24 months, to begin as soon as
possible. Salary will be within Grade 1A of the Research and Analogous
staff salary structure (\16315735 to \16323631) p.a.

The project aims to capture in a computer model the knowledge that
experts draw upon in designing and laying out pages or runs of
pages. The genre of a page (whether it's an encyclopaedia entry, a set
of instructions, or a Web page, for example) plays a central role in
determining what graphical devices are chosen and how they will be
employed in illustrated documents. The project is intended to model
exactly what this role is, and how the different purposes of the
document are expressed through graphical resources. The resulting
model will allow alternative and novel layout genres to be explored
through automatic generation.

We need a lively, practical, expert communicator with initiative and
team spirit who can entertain ideas from publishing design,
psychology, artificial intelligence, art history, linguistics, and
pretty much anywhere else, and who can use and develop happy working
relationships outside academia. The successful candidate will work
with layout professionals and with a corpus of sample layouts to
synthesise expertise in document design, drawing both on their own
experience of layout and on the expertise of publishing professionals
whose involvement the postholder in particular will co-ordinate. The
postholder will be someone who's constantly in dialogue with the
research team and the user groups to ensure that the project results
are based in the real-world constraints of commercial document
production. The second key role of the postholder will be to design
and implement a Web presence for the project that dynamically reflects
the state of our knowledge about layout, and for this reason you will
need, or be able to acquire very quickly, skills with modern web-based
tools, and a knowledge of HTML, XML, Java and emerging standards in
document layout. The post will also involve:

 * collecting and scanning an appropriate corpus 
 of illustrated documents
 * developing an annotation system for marking 
 up layout characteristics and applying it to 
 the corpus
 * comparative analysis of documents to work 
 out how they differ, and relating differences to 
 a model of genre
 * discussing results and eliciting expert
 knowledge from user groups of publishers and other
 layout experts
 * drafting reports and papers, and presenting and 
 publicising our results

Informal enquiries should be addressed to Dr. Judy Delin, the project
co-ordinator (01786 467974, email j.l.delinstir.ac.uk). Further
particulars
are available from the Personnel Office, University of Stirling,
Stirling,
FK9 4LA, tel: (01786) 467028, fax (01786) 466155 or email
personnelstir.ac.uk. Closing date for applications: 19 July 1999.






Dr Judy Delin
Department of English Studies 
and 
Centre for Research in Communication and Language
University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK
Phone: +44 1786 467974 
Fax: +44 1786 466201 (F)
Email: j.l.delinstir.ac.uk