Breaking Boundaries: Current Research Trends in English Linguistics and Philology

Abstract

Research in English language and literature (ELL), at the beginning of the 21 st century, covers a very broad span.The discipline has traditionally included linguistic studies of English and related varieties, and branches of English literary studies from Old English and early Renaissance literature to modernism and up to the present, but such an outline obscures an astonishingly wide range.And such breadth has now achieved official sanction, in the UK government's recent public assessment of its universities' research quality, the Research Excellence Framework of 2014, where the list of topics presented for consideration was outlined as follows:all aspects of language studies, including all areas of linguistics and of applied linguistics, with primary reference to any variety of English or Scots; the history of English or Scots; Old Norse/Icelandic (language, literature and linguistic studies); English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day; North American literature; comparative literature; world literatures in English; colonial and postcolonial literatures and languages; women's writing; creative writing; life writing; children's literature; critical and cultural theory;