Dr. Ernestine Lahey

About me

I’m an Associate Professor in Linguistics and Stylistics. I completed my PhD at the University of Nottingham, and held teaching positions in the UK and Canada before coming to UCR in 2006. My research interests are broad, and include stylistics, corpus linguistics, Text World Theory, literary landscape representation, popular literature, and Canadian literature and culture. My current research focuses on the integration of data-analysis techniques in (corpus) stylistics.

I enjoy teaching at UCR because of the energy of our undergraduates, for whom so much is still new and exciting. The enthusiasm they bring to their learning is contagious and inspiring.

Achievements

• 2022 eScience Center Fellow
• 2020: Nominee for Utrecht University’s Outstanding Teacher Award

Books

• Virdis, D.F., Zurru, E. and Lahey, E. (eds) (2021) Language in Place: Stylistic Perspectives on Landscape, Place and Environment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Gavins, J. and Lahey, E. (eds) (2016) World-Building: Discourse in the Mind. London: Bloomsbury.

Articles

• Lahey, E. (forthcoming) ‘Stylistics and text world theory’, in M. Burke (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
• Lahey, E. (forthcoming) ‘Dan Brown’, Contemporary Literary Criticism. Gale Cengage.
• Bartl, S. and Lahey, E. (forthcoming) ‘As the title implies: How readers talk about titles in Amazon book reviews.’ Language and Literature.
• Lahey, E. (2021) ‘Death by nature in two poems by Alden Nowlan’, in D.F. Virdis, E. Zurru and E. Lahey (eds) Language in Place: Stylistic Perspectives on Landscape, Place and Environment. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 45-64.
• Virdis, D.F., Zurru, E. and Lahey, E. (2021) ‘Introduction’, Language in Place: Stylistic Perspectives on Landscape, Place and Environment, D.F. Virdis, E. Zurru and E. Lahey (eds), Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 1-16.
• Lahey, E. (2019) ‘World building as cognitive feedback loop’, in B. Neurohr and L. Stewart-Smith (eds) Experiencing Fictional Worlds. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 53-72.
• Lahey, E. (2016) ‘Author-character ethos in the Robert Langdon novels of Dan Brown: a Text World Theory approach’, in J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds) World-Building: Discourse in the Mind. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 33-51.
• Gavins, J. and Lahey, E. (2016) ‘World building in discourse’, in J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds) World Building: Discourse in the Mind. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 1-13.
• Lahey, E. (2015) ‘Remember and forget in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons: a corpus-informed account’. Language and Literature 24.4: 292-306.
• Lahey, E. (2014) ‘Stylistics and text world theory’, in M. Burke (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. London: Routledge, pp. 284-96.
• Lahey, E. (2012) ‘Blended discourses: reading the multimodal North in Al Purdy’s North of Summer’, in D. Zetu (ed.) Contemporary Canadian Literature: European Approaches. Iasi: Al. I. Cuza University Press, pp. 68-99.
• Cruickshank, T. and Lahey, E. (2010) ‘Building the stages of drama: towards a Text World Theory account of dramatic play texts’. Journal of Literary Semantics 39.1: 67-91.
• Lahey, E. (2007) ‘Megametaphorical mappings and the landscapes of Canadian Poetry’, in M. Lambrou and P. Stockwell (eds) ontemporary Stylistics. London: Continuum, pp. 156-167.
• Lahey, E. (2006) ‘(Re)thinking world-building: locating the text-worlds of Canadian lyric poetry.’ Journal of Literary Semantics 35.2: 145-64.
• Lahey, E. (2004) ‘All the world’s a subworld: direct speech and subworld creation in Norman MacCaig’s “After.”’ Nottingham Linguistic Circular 18: 21-28.
• Lahey, E. (2003) ‘Seeing the forest for the trees in Al Purdy’s “Trees at the Arctic Circle.”’ BELL: Belgian Journal of English Language and Literatures. ns 1: 73-83.

Other projects

Creative writing