Andrew Caink

Andrew Caink is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Westminster, where he serves as Course Leader for the BA English Literature & Language program. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Linguistics from Durham University and has lectured at institutions including Durham, Lapland, and Wolverhampton. His career spans teaching and research in linguistics, English Language, and literary studies across the UK, Finland, Poland, and Bulgaria.

• Education: BA (Oxford), PGCE (Bristol), MA (Durham), PhD (Durham)

Dr. Caink's research bridges theoretical linguistics and literary studies. His work focuses on:

• Grammatical theory, particularly closed-class ('grammatical') words in South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat) and English.
• Pragmatic theory, applying relevance theory to literary texts to analyze reader engagement and the interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic structures.
• Stylistic analysis of parallel structures, locative inversion, and literary repetition, notably in Muriel Spark's works.
• Empirical approaches to literary difficulty and multisensory language interpretation.

His publications include formal linguistic studies (Journal of Literary Semantics, Journal of Slavic Linguistics) and creative fiction (Stand, Succour). He has supervised doctoral research on topics like multisensory language in botanic gardens and audio description accessibility, while contributing to academic communities via external examining and journal reviewing.