Nancy Bell
Associate Professor
Biography
Nancy Bell teaches courses in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and linguistics, as well as courses in academic literacy for students who use English as a second language. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Educational Linguistics. Before coming to WSU, she taught for four years at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Recent Publications
(Forthcoming). Humor as pedagogical safe house in the foreign language classroom. The Modern Language Journal. (with Anne Pomerantz).
(2011). Wordplay on church marquees. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Studies, 24(2): 187-202. (with Scott Crossley and Christian Hempelmann).
(2011). Comparing playful and non-playful incidental attention to form. Language Learning.
(2011). Humor scholarship and TESOL: Applying findings and establishing a research agenda. TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 134-159.
(2010). Failed humor: Issues in non-native speakers' appreciation and understanding of humor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(3): 423-447. (with Salvatore Attardo).
(2009). A Student's Guide to the MA TESOL. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
(2009). Impolite responses to failed humor. In D. Chiaro and N. Norrick (eds.) Humor in Interaction (pp. 143-163). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
(2009). Learning about and through humor in the L2 classroom. Language Teaching Research, 13(3): 241-258.
(2009). Responses to failed humor. Journal of Pragmatics, 41: 1825-1836.
(2007). Learning to play, playing to learn: FL learners as multicompetent language users. Applied Linguistics, 28(4): 556-578. (with Anne Pomerantz).
(2007). Safe Territory? Bilingual women's humorous narratives. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 40(2/3): 199-225.
(2007). Microteaching: What is it that's going on here? Linguistics and Education, 18(1): 24-40.
(2007). Humor comprehension: Lessons learned from cross-cultural interaction. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 20(4): 367-387.
(2007). How native and non-native English speakers adapt to humor in intercultural interaction. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 20(1): 27-48.
(2006). Interactional adjustments in humorous intercultural communication. Intercultural Pragmatics, 3(1), 1-28.
(2005). Exploring L2 language play as an aid to SLL: A case study of humour in NS-NNS interaction. Applied Linguistics, 26(2): 192-218.
Research Interests
Her research interests center mainly on the discourse analytic investigation of conversational humor and language play, especially with respect to second language users. In addition, she is interested in second language teaching and learning, intercultural interaction, and the development of second language sociolinguistic competence.