Four Major Research Areas:

Language Cognition and Education (including cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, neuro-linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, second language acquisition, corpus construction, language education theory and practice). It explores the nature of language and its relationship with other cognitive systems, and the formation of language skills, their development and use; analyzes and evaluates social, cultural, political, economic and other factors that influence language development, cognition and language education, with a view to building its strength in contemporary linguistic theories and language education practice.

European and American Literatures and Cross-cultural Studies (including British literature, American literature, German literature, Australian literature, literary theory and criticism, translation and cross-cultural studies). It probes into Euro-American literatures since the Renaissance and its extensive relationship with the social development and process of civilization, from the modern political, ideological, philosophical, aesthetic and scientific perspectives. By revealing the universality of aesthetics and narrative principles that are embedded in national literatures, it aims to study literature itself, while not losing sight of cross-cultural concerns in teaching and research. 

History of Literature, Thought and Civilization (including Chinese Literature, Intellectual History of China and the West, Comparative Literature, etc.). By employing the languages and literatures from a number of countries, such as China, Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Japan, etc., as the medium and carrier, it aims to explore into a wider range of world literature and culture, and reevaluate the historical process of intermingling and clashes between Chinese and Western civilizations and its significance to the contemporary world, in order to reach the goal of “telling Chinese stories by interpreting the world.”

East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Pacific Rim Studies (including Japanese Language and Literature, East Asia and Pacific Rim Studies). By incorporating the theories and methods of area studies, this group aims to explore into the language, literature, culture and humanities research theories of the major countries in East Asia and of some specific countries in the Pacific Rim. It will try to find out the historical formation of the Pacific Rim and its significance, in order to facilitate a deep dialogue between China and the world and provide more scientific proofs from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences for the possibility of co-existence of human societies.