News & Events

10 April 2025 HCLS has been appointed as a liaison of ISO after voting by permanent member countries. The appointment demonstrates the international recognition of the research and expertise that HCLS embodies. Liaisons can be established between ISO committees, between ISO committees and committees of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and between ISO committees and external organizations. In this new role, HCLS is particularly associated with the task force on the semantic annotation of language resources within ISO's Technical Committee 37 Language and Terminology. The role of HCLS as an external liaison ensures that the centre's specialist experience and expertise are included during the drafting process of an international standard.

29 March 2025 HCLS Director, Prof Alex Fang attended the 2025 Annual Meeting of the China National Technical Committee for Standardization of Language and Terminology as a reappointed member certified by the Standardization Administration of China, which was held on 29 March 2025 in Beijing. At the end of the meeting, he gave a keynote speech on the Latest Developments of International Standardization Research in Language Resources and Terminology from the Perspective of Artificial Intelligence (人工智能视角下国际语言术语标准研究最新发展). In the talk, he reviewed some of the latest international standards addressing AI technologies that have been jointly published by ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). He shared his visions about the paramount importance of language resources and the central role of linguistic methods to meet the emergent requirements arising from the booming AI industry.

30 December 2024 HCLS member Prof Shengqing Liao has been awarded a major project of China National Social Science Fund 國家社科基金重大項目. He is Project Coordinator of the project "Research on the spread and countermeasures of false information related to China in the international public opinion war" 國際輿論戰中涉華虛假信息傳播及對策研究. Prof Alex Fang is Co-Principal Investigator of a sub-project on linguistic features of media discourse. The award represents the highest national recognition of the collaborative research between the Centre and Fudan University. Prof Liao is visiting HCLS for two weeks, during which time he will perform some preparatory research and discuss with Centre members.

19 December 2024 Prof Tony Mcenery started today as Visiting Professor to the Halliday Centre. He is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS, UK) and Distinguished Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK. He has been a member of HCLS for the past four years. His current research projects include Lana, a 10-million-word corpus of spoken American English in collaboration with the University of North Arizona, building on the success of his Spoken BNC2014 of British English. His latest major publications include Fundamental Principles of Corpus Linguistics published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. He has got another book publication coming up next, soon. During his visit of one month, he will work with the Centre's members on corpus-based approaches to journalistic discourse and the annotation of language resources for LLMs as well as directing research students in the area of corpus-based approaches to discourse analysis. His visit is generously sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences headed by Prof Alfred Ho.

10 December 2024 A delegation from Zhongnan University visited the Centre yesterday on 10 December. The visitors included six senior members of the School of Liberal Arts: the dean and the associate dean, the head of the department of communication, two associate heads of the departments of Chinese and a professor specialising in cultural industry. They met with Alex on issues related to research and development in the area of corpus-based language technologies. Discussions focused on the construction and management of large linguistic corpora in response to the emergent requirement for high-quality language resources arising from the latest development of artificial intelligence.

31 October 2024 Prof Alex Fang was invited to visit the School of Liberal Arts at Zhongnan University in Changsha for academic exchange during the period of 30 Oct - 3 Nov 2024. He gave a talk on the topic of "Corpus-based investigation of engagement in journalistic discourse" in the Department of Chinese on 31 October 2024. The talk described his joint research with Prof Min Dong comparing the use of engagement types between British and Chinese journalistic discourse across news and editorials carried in newspapers, magazines and the Internet, engagement being one of the three elements laid out in Appraisal Theory by the Centre's affiliated member Prof Jim Martin at the University of Sydney and his co-author Dr Peter White at the University of New South Wales. The audience included undergraduates and research students as well as faculty members. The talk is featured in a report posted by the National Language Promotion Base at Zhongnan University. Follow this link for more information

24 October 2024 HCLS received a delegation of four professors, led by Prof Min Dong of the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University. The discussions covered joint research and personnel exchange in the areas of corpus-based approaches to language. The meeting identified mutual interests in discourse analysis and semantic annotation of language resources.

11-15 September 2024 The 2024 International Forum on Interoperable Semantic Annotation of Language Resources in Beijing. For more details, please click here.

31 August 2024 - Ongoing Projects
Lydia Catedral: Expanding discourse analytic applications through participation in grassroots advocacy.
Alex Fang: The cognitive underpinning of linguistic encodings of discourse sentiment and its application in media discourse.

18 August 2024 Centre Director Prof Alex C. Fang gave an opening speech at the School of Communication in Yunnan University on Saturday 10 August, marking the beginning of the Third Graduate Summer School on Frontiers in International (South and Southeast Asia) Communication Theory and Research Methods, 10–18 August 2024. He subsequently gave a talk on engagement patterns in British and Chinese media discourse. On 11 August, the Centre's core member Prof Christine Huang gave a talk on risk management. On 13 August, Prof Christian Matthiessen delivered a lecture on the topic of registers and communication followed by Prof Tony McEnery's lecture on 16 August on corpus-based reconstruction of the Gladstone campaign. The 9-day programme consisted of a total of 38 talks by well-know scholars in media and communication as well as linguistics. It was concluded on 18 August, having received extensive coverage by the media, including People's Daily, Yunnan Daily, Yunnan News, and Yunnan Net.

10-18 August 2024 International Graduate Summer School on Frontiers in International (South Asia and Southeast Asia) Communication Theory and Research Methods Organized by · Faculty of Journalism and Communication, Communication University of China · School of Journalism (School of International Communication in South and Southeast Asia), Yunnan University · The Journalism and Communication Sub-Committee, South and Southeast Asia University Network · The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies, City University of Hong Kong Building on the successful hosting of the graduate summer school in 2022 and 2023, the Faculty of Journalism and Communication at the Communication University of China, the School of Journalism at Yunnan University (School of International Communication South and Southeast Asian), the Journalism and Communication Sub-Committee of the South and Southeast Asian University Alliance, and the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies at City University of Hong Kong organized the Third Graduate Summer School on Frontiers in International (South and Southeast Asia) Communication Theory and Research Methods, held in Kunming, Yunnan Province, 10–18 August 2024.

9-11 June 2024 Prof Alex Fang visited Beijing 9-11 June 2024. He met with colleagues from Standardization Administration of China (SAC), China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS), Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang), and Tsinghua University. Discussions covered collaborations in the areas of international standards, annotation of evaluative language, and large language models.

18-24 May 2024 ISO/TC 37/SC 4 resolved to appoint Prof Alex Chengyu Fang as secretary of ISO/TC 37/SC 4/WG 2 Semantic annotation to manage the administration of WG 2 affairs. Alex attended the meetings in Turin, Italy, in his capacity as representative expert certified by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) and expert member of ISO in the area of language resource management.

25 April 2024 Centre member Prof Michaela Mahlberg has been promoted to the position of Humboldt Chair and Professor of Digital Humanities at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. At the same time, she remains associated with the University of Birmingham as Honorary Professor. Many congratulations on this significant recognition of her academic achievements!

23-24 April 2024 HCLS co-organised an international conference on the theme of Brain, Language and Communication together with Yunnan Daily Press Group, School of Journalism (College of International Communication of South and Southeast Asia), Yunnan University, and The South and Southeast Asian University Network. The conference was sponsored by Yunnan Province Key Laboratory of All Media Convergence and was held 22-23 April 2024 on the premises of Yunnan Daily Press Group in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Five members of HCLS participated in the event and gave talks on their respective research. The conference marked a pioneering effort to combine the disciplines of brain, language and communication in the study of journalistic discourse. It has also generated enthusiastic expressions of interest in collaborations across disciplines, departments, universities and social sectors. HCLS will continue to play a vital role in the promotion and development of appliable linguistics to achieve even greater social impact.

22 April 2024 Centre director Prof Alex Fang and centre member Prof Niels Schiller visited Yunnan Daily Press Group on 22 April 2024. They met with the President of the Group and the director of the Key Laboratory of All Media Convergence of Yunnan Province. Prof Fang emphasised the importance of research in writer stance and reader engagement in journalistic writing. The president of Yunnan Daily and the lab director both expressed keen interest in collaborations with the Centre.

19 February 2024 Prof Shengqing Liao has just completed his visit to HCLS. As Dean of Journalism at Yunnan University and Professor of Communication at Fudan University, he engaged in meaningful interdisciplinary discussions, contributed to the Centre's 2024 CRF grant application in fake news detection, and delivered a lecture on news credibility at the 2nd International Halliday Forum. He also facilitated cross-institutional collaborations focusing on student exchanges, joint research, and academic conferences with Prof. Niels Schiller and Prof. Alex Fang.

1 February 2024 Professor Niels Olaf Schiller has joined the Centre as Core Member. Professor Schiller has been appointed by CityU as Professor and HoD of the Department of Linguistics and Translation. Niels's expertise and research interests will broaden the scope and profile of the research that HCLS embodies.

22 January 2024 The 2nd International Halliday Forum revolved around the theme of journalistic discourse, showcasing a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies to analyse this genre, as well as integrating Corpus Linguistics. The forum hosted five eminent speakers from internationally renowned universities. The event started at 3 pm and finished at 7 pm.

19 January 2024 Prof Shengqing Liao has just joined the Centre as Visiting Professor. He is Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and Yunnan University in Kunming, where he serves as Dean of the School of Journalism, also known as College of International Communication of South and Southeast Asia. He was vice chairman of the Chinese Association of Ethnic Journalism & Communication as well as head of Department of Communication Studies, School of Journalism, at Fudan University. His visit will greatly strengthen the ongoing corpus-based research in journalistic discourse at HCLS.

8 December 2023 The Halliday Forum 2023 on Intelligent Applications of Languages Studies was held on 8 Dec. Centre director Prof Alex Fang opened the forum. Prof Kiyong Lee and Prof Jae Woong Choe, both of Korea Unviersity, were invited to deliver keynote talks. The core members of the Centre gave presentations on their latest research, touching on a variety of different topics, methodologies and thought-provoking findings. Research collaborators and associated PhD students attended the forum. The Centre director wishes to thank all the participants and looks forward to a future edition of greater and broader participation.

15-18 March 2022 A Hongkong-Beijing-Lancaster Symposium on Research Methodologies for PhD Studies in Linguistics. REMLing’22 was jointly organised by the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications for Language Studies (HCLS) at City University of Hong Kong, the MIIT Centre of AI-based Linguistic Information Processing (CALIP) at Beihang University, Beijing, and the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences (CASS) at Lancaster University. The even is sponsored by the Beijing-HK University Alliance, Hong Kong.

7 September 2021 Elena Semino joined the Halliday Centre as Affiliated Member. She is Professor of Linguistics and Verbal Art and Director of ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University.

22 August 2021 The Steering Committee of HCLS met and heard the Director's report on the latest developments. The committee endorsed the Centre's latest efforts to build a critical mass of expertise of core and affiliated members, grant applications to BHUA and SPPR, and international collaborations and fund raising activities. The committee endorsed healthcare language and communication as a strategic area of development for the centre and advised on imminent funding opportunities. The Steering Committee is chaired by Christine (CityU) and convened by Alex with Gerhard (Vienna) and Harry (Tilburg) as members. Jonathan as the Centre Advisor was also present at the meeting and spoke on strategic developments.

18 August 2021 Alex met with Prof Elena Semino, Director of the ESRC Center for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences of Lancaster University, UK. Prof Jonathan Culpeper (HoD of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster), Prof Richard Walker (Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, CityU) and Prof Christine Huang (Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, CityU) were also at the meeting to discuss collaborations between the two research centres.

12 August 2021 Christoph Hafner joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. He is Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong.

26 July 2021 Ji Won Kim joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong.

23 July 2021 Christine Yi-Hui Huang joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. Christine is Chair Professor of Communication and Media and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong.