Dr Peter White
Ph.D (University of Sydney), B.A. (Hons) University of Sydney, B.A. (Hons) University of Adelaide, Graduate Certificate in ESL Teaching (University of New South Wales)
Dr White is one of the principal architects of the Appraisal framework,an account of the means by which texts convey evaluative and attitudinal meanings. [See for detailed information, contacts, bibliographies/links and an introductory course.] He is influential in the development of linguistics-based analyses of mass communicative discourse (journalism, politics, corporate communications, public relations and advertising) and in the contrastive analysis of journalism and political rhetoric across languages and cultures.
Dr White's further research interests include educational linguistics (literacy development, including English-language literacy development in indigenous and bilingual settings; genre-based pedagogy), translation studies and contrastive linguistics, corpus and computational linguistics (including sentiment analysis and opinion mining), argumentation theory and the language of persuasion, and new developments in Systemic Function Linguistic theory. For a detailed listing (with download links) of Dr White's publications see .
He supervises PhD candidates working across these different topic areas.
Prior to undertaking academic study, Dr White worked as a journalist and journalism trainer for almost 20 years (Sydney Morning Herald, The Adelaide Advertiser,聽Special Broadcasting Service -SBS). He gained his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2000 and prior to teaching media studies, linguistics, discourse analysis and journalism聽 at the University of New South Wales taught linguistics and journalism at the University of Adelaide, linguistics and English Language studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), journalism and media studies at the University of Wollongong and linguistics at the University of Sydney.,
He is also a semi-professional jazz musicians, currently performing on saxophone and keyboards with the Travelling Circumstances jazz combo.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
I act as literacy development consultant for a group of primary schools identified as having students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. I act in a similar capacity in a project developing teaching and learning resources for literacy developments in remote-area indigenous schools in the Anangu lands of northern South Australia.
I review for a number of academic journals including Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies,聽Discourse, Context and Media, Functions of Language, and Functional Linguistics.
My Research Supervision
Linguistics, Journalism, Translation Studies
My Teaching
Currently supervising PhD students in the following topic areas:
- journalistic discourse analysis (including contrastive studies),
- political discourse analysis,
- translation and interpreting studies,
- contrastive linguistics and contrastive discourse analysis (across cultures and languages),
- educational linguistics (issues in academic English, literacy development, ESL/EFL, genre-based pedagogy),
- the language of evaluation and intersubjective stance,
- argumentation theory and the language of persuasion,
- critical discourse analysis.
Undergraduate teaching
- Convener: Journalistic Voices and Values (MDIA1002)
- Convener: Features Journalism (MDIA2003)
- Convener: Opinion Journalism (MDIA2002)
- Convener: Professional Media Practices (MDIA3010)