Professor Judith Baxter

I am Professor of Applied Linguistics and currently Head of English Language in the School of Languages and Social Sciences. I am also  Assistant Director of Aston’s Research Centre for Interdisciplinary research in Language and Diversity (InterLAND), which brings together colleagues in applied linguistics, social sciences and business studies.

My current research focus is on the relationship between language, gender and leadership in educational, business and professional contexts. I have recently completed an ESRC research project entitled ‘Leadership Talk and Gender in Senior Management Business Meetings in the UK’, which ran from September 1st 2009 until January 2011.  I have also published a monograph, The Language of Female Leadership, with Palgrave Macmillan. My work regularly appears in newspaper articles, on radio and in TV programmes including the BBC2 series Women at the Top in September 2012.

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) English and History, University of East Anglia,
• M.Sc. Educational Studies, University of Surrey
• PhD Applied Linguistics, University of Reading
• PGCE in Secondary English, University of Cambridge
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Undergraduate Teaching

• Language and Gender

• Leadership and Management Communication 1 and 2 

Responsibilities

• Head of English Language

• Convenor of the Business Communication strand on the BA International Business and Management programme

• Assistant Director Interland

• LSS Equality and Diversity Representative

Articles

• (in press).Who wants to be the leader? The linguistic construction of emerging leadership in differently gendered teams. Journal of Business Communication. 
• ‘Women of the Corporation: a sociolinguistic perspective of senior women’s leadership language in the UK.’ Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16/1: 81 – 107, 2012.
  
• ‘Survival or success?: A critical exploration of the use of ‘double-voiced discourse’ by women business leaders in the UK.’ Discourse and Communication, 231 -246, 2011.
  
• ‘‘I’m not going to talk to whatever her name is’: Constructing professional identities through male solidarity and female exclusion in builders’ discourse.’ (with K. Wallace) Discourse & Society 20 (4): 411-29, 2009.
  
• ‘Constructions of active womanhood and new femininities: From a feminist linguistic perspective, is Sex and the City a modernist or a post-modernist TV text?’ Women and Language, 30 (2): 91-7, 2009.
  
• ‘Is it all tough talking at the top? A post-structuralist analysis of the construction of gendered speaker identities of British business leaders within interview narratives.’ Gender and Language, Vol 1 (4):197-22, 2008
  
• 'Jokers in the Pack: why boys are more adept than girls at speaking in public.’ Language & Education , 16, 2, pp. 81-96, 2002
  
• Competing discourses in the classroom: a post-structuralist analysis of girls' and boys' speech in public contexts.’ Discourse & Society 13, 6, pp. 827-842, 2002
  
• ‘Is PDA really an alternative? A reply to West.’ Discourse & Society 13 (6), pp. 853-859, 2002
  
• ‘A Juggling Act: a feminist post-structuralist analysis of girls' and boys' talk in the secondary classroom.’ Gender & Education 14, 1, 5-19, 2002
  
• Going Public: teaching students to speak out in public contexts.’ NATE: English in Education 34 (2), pp. 26-34, 2002
  

Chapters

• ‘Feminist research’. In C.A. Chapelle (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics: Qualitative Methods. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
• ‘Gender’ in J. Simpson (ed.) The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. London: Routledge (2011)
• ‘Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis in Language and Gender Research: Approaches in Dialogue.’ Co-authored with Ann Weatherall, Maria Stubbe and Jane Sunderland. In J. Holmes and M. Marra (eds.) Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.
• 'Discourse-analytic approaches to text and talk'. In L. Litosseliti (ed.) Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum, 2010.
• Feminist Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis: a new theoretical and methodological approach? In J. Sunderland et al, Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Gender and Language Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 243-55, 2008
• Post-structuralist analysis of classroom discourse. In M. Martin-Jones & A.M. de Mejia, Encyclopaedia of Language and Education: Discourse and Education, Vol 3. New York: Springer, 2007
•  'Do we have to agree with her?' How high school girls negotiate leadership in public contexts. In J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts. Palgrave: Macmillan, pp. 159-178, 2006
• Putting gender in its place: constructing speaker identities in management meetings. In M. Barrett & M.J. Davidson (eds) Gender and Communications at Work. Aldershot : Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2005  

Magazine articles and reports

• ‘Undergraduate English Language: a subject in search of an identity? Liaison 2: January 2009.
• ‘The Language of Female Leadership’. Research Review, Issue 7, Winter 2008-9.
• 'English Language at undergraduate level: its place within UK Higher Education in the 21st century'. (with Denise Santos) Southampton University: LLAS, 2008  

Recent conference and seminar papers

• Double-voiced Discourse: Gendered ways of enacting leadership discourse in UK business meetings.’ Research seminar held at the School of Education, University of Reading, July 2011.

• ‘Survival or success? Gendered ways of enacting leadership discourse in UK business meetings.’ Research seminar held at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, February 2011.

• ‘Emerging impact, emerging theory: an ESRC research study on gender and the language of leadership’. Research seminar held at the School of English, University of Birmingham, November 2010.

• ‘Survival or success? Gendered ways of enacting leadership discourse in UK business meetings.’ Research seminar held at The University of West England, October 2010.

• Global archetypes or local practices?: A study of the language of women business leaders in the UK. The British Association of Applied Linguists Annual Meeting, University of Aberdeen, September 2010.

• ‘Women leaders as archetypes? Challenging the discursive boundaries’. Paper given on ‘Women in Leadership: A Discourse Perspective’. Event held at Aston University, June 2010.

• ‘What can a sociolinguistic perspective contribute to an understanding of leadership discourse?’ Research seminar held in the Aston Business School, Aston University, May 2010.

For other publications see click here

Media Activity

• BBC2 Series: Women at the Top, Part 1 on September 6th 2012; designed and presented a gender, language and leadership experiment.

• The Observer and The Guardian, May 20^th 2012.  ‘Why women's jokes fall flat in the boardroom? Women often try to use self-deprecating humour to get their colleagues on-side but it raises few laughs’ by Social Policy Editor, Daniel Boffey

• The Daily Mail May 21^st 2012. ‘The unfunny girls! Female bosses' jokes fall flat while men get all the laughs in the boardroom’

• The Daily Telegraph, May 21^st 2012. ‘Female bosses 'less funny in the boardroom' by Hannah Furness

• Blomberg Businessweek: ‘Women are less willing to be funny at work’ says Report. By Veronica Wong, May 23^rd 2012.

• ‘Women Told to Speak their Minds to Get on in Boardroom’, article on my research by Daniel Boffey on 19.6.2011.

• A radio interview for the BBC Radio World Service Business Daily 18.6.2011.

•  An interview for Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on 26.7.2011.