Micah Corum, Ph.D.
Area(s) of Expertise: sociolinguistics, construction grammar, pidgins and Creoles
Overview
Dr. Corum received his B.A. in Spanish from Oklahoma State University, M.A. in English from the University of Puerto Rico, and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Hamburg. He teaches face-to-face and online courses in standard and advanced English grammar, first-year writing, and linguistics. He is an editorial board member of the language and linguistics journal Odisseia, and he has been an external reader for the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics since 2015. Dr. Corum serves as the advisor for the linguistics minor in the Department of English.
Education
- Ph.D., English, University of Puerto Rico, 2017
- Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Hamburg, 2013
- B.A., Spanish, Oklahoma State University, 2005
Courses Taught
- ENGL 1101 English Composition I
- ENGL 2050 Standard English Grammar
- ENGL 3050 Advanced English Grammar
- ENGL 3020 Introduction to English Linguistics
- SELL 3001 Cultural Issues in ESOL
Research/Special Interests
Dr. Corum’s research interests include histories and stages of development of pidgins and Creoles, discourse strategies in present-day Caribbean Creoles, and typological analyses of contact languages in general. In his 2015 monograph published by Mouton de Gruyter, he used a typological survey of locative features in West African languages to describe location marking strategies in English-lexifier pidgins and Creoles of the broad Afro-Atlantic region.
Publications
Corum, M. (2021). Popular geopolitical metaphors we live(d) by: Remarks on Western hegemonic discourses and Caribbean colonial history. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 5, 135-142.
Corum, M. (2021). Conceptual construal, convergence, and the Creole lexicon. In N. Faraclas & S. Delgado (Eds.), Creoles, revisited: Language contact, language change, and postcolonial linguistics (pp. 185-204). Routledge.
Corum, M. (2018). Cultivating ambiguity: Notes on issues of complexity in Creole discourse. Bakhtiniana: Journal of Discourse Studies, 18(2), 7-29. doi:10.1590/2176-457333628
Corum, M. (2015). Substrate and adstrate: The origins of spatial semantics in West African Pidgincreoles. Language Contact and Bilingualism 10. Mouton de Gruyter.
Corum, M. (2012). On the origins of locative for in West African Pidgin English: A componential approach. Legon Journal of Humanities, 24, 36-68.
Arrindell, R., Corum, M., & Alleyne, M. (2008). Locating St. Martin in the Caribbean sociolinguistic typology. La Torre, 13(49/50), 591-614.
Exhibitions
Corum, M. (2021). Polyphony and discourse in Creole. Presented online at the 17th International Bakhtin Conference in Saransk, Mordovia.
Corum, M. (2019). Beyond a reasonable calque: On metaphor and metonymy in Creole word formation. Presented on the panel Cultural Semantics in the North at the 7th Scandinavian Association of Language and Cognition at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Corum, M, & Faraclas, N. (2017). Examples of how a cognitive linguistics approach can be utilized in creole studies. Presented at the Summer Meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in Tampere, Finland.
Corum, Micah. (2015). Atlantic Englishes and their Creole kin. Invited lecture hosted by the English Department of University of Lausanne for the purpose of hiring a Maitre d’enseignment et de recherche, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Corum, M. & Osei-Tutu, K. (2013). Metonymy and the study of semantics in Ghanaian Student Pidgin. Presented at the Summer Meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in Lisbon, Portugal.
Corum, M. (2011). Resuscitating the domestic origin hypothesis: A componential approach to locative predication in Nigerian Pidgin. Presented at the Summer Meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics at the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra, Ghana.
Work Experience
Teaching Posts
Assistant Professor- Taught courses in linguistics, composition and rhetoric, and TESOL methods, Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, Department of Languages & Literature, 2015-2020.
Lecturer- Taught undergraduate ESL reading and writing courses and graduate courses in linguistics, East Tennessee State University, Department of Literature & Language, 2013-2015.
Adjunct Lecturer- Taught courses for the master’s program ‘English as a World Language’, University of Hamburg, Institute for English & American Studies, Germany, 2012-2013.
Editorial Service
Editorial Board Member- Serving as a member of the editorial board of Revista Odisseia, October 2019-present, published by Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
Guest Editor- Invited to serve as a guest editor of special issue 8(2) of Revista Letras Raras, January-June 2019, published by Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil.
External Referee- Serving as an external reviewer for the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, August 2014-present, published by De Gruyter.
Personal Information
Married with children.