Dr Rachele De Felice

Professional biography

I am a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and English Language. My main research and teaching interests are in the areas of corpus linguistics, pragmatics, workplace communication, and the intersections of these - such as corpus pragmatics. I joined the School of Languages & Applied Linguistics in 2022, after ten years as a senior teaching fellow and then lecturer at University College London. Previously I have held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Nottingham (Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow) and at ETS in Princeton, New Jersey.

I gained my DPhil (PhD) in Computational Linguistics  (Department of Computer Science) and MPhil in Linguistics at Oxford University. 

Research interests

In my research, I analyse large collections of naturally occurring language, called corpora, to understand how people use particular instances of language to achieve their communicative goals: expressing solidarity, making a request, avoiding a task, giving advice, and so on. In particular, I am currently working on the following areas:

• how people communicate in workplace emails, using datasets such as the Enron Corpus and the Clinton Email Corpus
• how people talk about probems in emails - how are problems described, who takes responsibility for them, how are solutions agreed on?
• the nature of giving and receiving advice - both in spontaneous conversation (London-Lund Corpora) and in other settings such as teaching and other professional contexts

My Cambridge Element Advice in Conversation: Corpus Pragmatics meets Mixed Methods, co-authored with Nele Poldvere and Carita Paradis, is available now in Open Access.

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of corpus linguistics, politeness, pragmatics, workplace communication.

Teaching interests

I am currently a member of the module team for LB170 Communication Skills for Business and Management. I have previously been a team member for L101 Introducing English Language Studies and L201 English in the World, and have contributed materials to our MA Module Core Concepts in Linguistics.

Impact and engagement

You can watch a talk about my research on the Clinton Emails here (aimed at a non-specialist audience): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIWmGq96QU , and read a short piece about asking for things in business emails here on MinuteHack.

I also co-created the short course on Effective communication strategies and skills for work - a non-credit-bearing, three-unit course for those who wish to develop their communication skills in the workplace!

International links

I am on the ICAME Executive Board, and was co-chair of the 43rd ICAME conference hosted in Cambridge.