Christopher Jenks

I am a scholar of language, communication, and culture. I currently work at Aalborg University, though I have worked in a number of other countries, including the United States, England, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

My research is broadly related to three areas of research: discourse analysis, global Englishes, and English language teaching. Within these sometimes overlapping areas, I investigate issues ranging from translingualism to Asian Englishes. I am particularly interested in how spoken and written discourse performs a range of communicative actions (e.g., trolling and arguing) and indexes a number of social phenomena (e.g., nationalism and race). Discourse analysis also guides the research that I carry out in language pedagogy. I enjoy uncovering the discourse structure and organization of important pedagogical issues, including longitudinal learning, classroom discussions, and computer-mediated communication.

Furthermore, I am committed to understanding critical pedagogical issues, such as how race and ethnicity inform our understanding of language teaching. My scholarship on global Englishes covers lingual franca encounters, language identities, student ideologies, and transnationalism. The contexts in which I conduct my research is exceptionally important to how I carve out my publications, and include online encounters, classroom learning, and intercultural interactions.