The Research Group on Communicating Public Messages is an innovative initiative of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Its members are linguists who are researching ways to make public messages clearer, more accessible, and easier to translate into community languages. They are sensitive to cultural differences in communication styles.
Linguists have developed new guidelines for clearer more accessible communication called the ‘minimal languages’ approach (also known as Clear, Explicit Translatable Language or CETL). This approach allows people to express important thoughts and messages in a simpler version of English which is easy to translate into other languages. This makes it easier to communicate important messages to diverse audiences.
We are
Dr Helen Bromhead
Helen is a linguistic expert in how people talk about climate change, extreme weather, and landscape. She is a research fellow in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and a project lead in Griffith’s Climate Action Beacon.
Professor Cliff Goddard
Cliff is a world-leading linguist working on the intersection of language, meaning and culture, and co-developer of the minimal languages approach. He is a professor in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science.
Associate Professor Kerrie Foxwell-Norton
Kerrie is a communication scholar whose research interests focus upon environmental communication, with a special interest in coastal and marine communities and their environments in Australia and the Asia Pacific. She is Head of Research (Motivation) in Griffith’s Climate Action Beacon.
Dr Monique Lewis
Monique is a communication scholar and sociologist, with an interest in how health issues are framed and mediated, and is the lead editor of ‘Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’, published by Palgrave, 2021.
Dr Lauren Sadow
Lauren is the creator of a cultural dictionary for teachers of English as a second language. She is project manager of an ARC-funded linguistics project in the Centre.
Ida Stevia Diget (PhD candidate)
Ida is pursuing a PhD dissertation in cross-translatability in heath communication.
Alena Kazmaly (PhD candidate)
Alena is undertaking a PhD dissertation in language issues in psychological personality description.
Connections to current funded research projects
Australian Research Council Discovery Project ‘The building blocks of meaning’ (co-chief investigator: Prof Cliff Goddard)
Griffith University Postdoctoral Fellowship ‘Bushfires, droughts, floods and cyclones: Talking about extreme weather and climate in Australia’ (investigator: Dr Helen Bromhead)
Griffith Climate Action Project ‘Words and meanings in everyday Australian discourse about climate change and climate action’ (investigators: Dr Helen Bromhead and Prof Cliff Goddard)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS/RESOURCES
Bromhead, Helen (2020). The semantics of bushfire in Australian English. In H. Bromhead and Z. Ye (eds), Meaning, Life and Culture: In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka. ANU Press.
Bromhead, Helen (2021). Disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies: a semantically-enhanced discourse study of 2011 Queensland Floods. Language Sciences 85 101381.
Bromhead, Helen and Cliff Goddard (Forthcoming). How can applied semantics inform better communicative strategies for climate change action?
Goddard, Cliff (ed.) (2018). Minimal English For a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Palgrave Macmillan.
[11 chapters featuring studies on the value and application of ‘Minimal English’ in various fields, including ethics, health, human rights discourse, education and international relations]
Goddard, Cliff (ed.) (2021). Minimal Languages in Action. Palgrave Macmillan.
[12 chapters highlighting the minimal languages approach applied in Australia, the Pacific, Europe and Asia. Topics include language teaching and learning, ‘easy language’ projects, agricultural development training, language revitalisation, intercultural education, paediatric assessment, and health messaging]
Goddard, Cliff (2021). “Minimal language” and COVID-19: How to talk about complex ideas using simple words. Korean Language and Literature Society 77 (July 30 2021), 93-111.
Goddard, Cliff and Wierzbicka, Anna (2021). Semantics in the time of coronavirus: “Virus”, “bacteria”, “germs”, “disease” and related concepts. Russian Journal of Linguistics 25(1), 7-23
Sadow, Lauren (2021). The Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers.
Wong, Jock (In press/2022). Explaining COVID-19-related concepts in Singapore: A minimal language approach. In S. D. Brunn and D. Gilbreath (eds.), COVID-19 and a World of Ad Hoc Geographies. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.