Wei Wang

Wei Wang
Associate Professor

6049 Agnes Arnold Hall
Phone: (713) 743-3070
Email: wwang58@central.uh.edu
Personal website

Bio

Dr. Wang’s research consists of three main lines, language use in social interaction, second language acquisition, and bilingual development. Her first line of work draws on conversation analysis and functional linguistics to investigate how linguistic forms are used by speakers as resources to accomplish various social actions and achieve their interactional goals. Her second line of research concerns second language learners’ development of interactional competence, i.e. speakers’ ability to organize social interactions—such as opening a conversation, repairing, and complaining—in mutually intelligible manners. Lastly, Dr. Wang is interested in bilingualism and bilingual development of school-age children, in particular, code-switching, and seeks to provide linguistic minority parents with insights on developmentally appropriate language input at home.

Education

• Ph.D. in Chinese Linguistics, UCLA
• M.Phil. in Linguistics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, China

Selected publications

• Wang, Wei. 2025. "Phonetic variants of response particles o and a in Mandarin conversations: The role of nasalization and glottalization in interaction." East Asian Pragmatics.
• Wang, Wei. 2025. "Word search in L2 Chinese: Differential practices and evidence for the development of interactional competence." Chinese as a Second Language Research,14(1), 29-54.
• Wang, Wei, and Meng Yeh. 2024. “The effect of instruction on the development of L2 interactional competence: Listener responses in Chinese as a second language.” System 127(12):103511.
• Wang, Wei. 2024. "Insertional code-switching as interactional resource in Mandarin-English bilingual conversation." International Journal of Bilingualism.
• Wang, Wei. 2024. "Response particles in Mandarin conversation: Interplay of function and prosody." Chinese Language and Discourse.
• Wang, Wei, and Meng Yeh. 2024. "Assessing interactive listening in beginning-level L2 Chinese: Developing a data-driven rating scale." Chinese as a Second Language." The Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA, 59(2), 175–201.
• Wang, Wei. 2021. “Pursuing common ground: Nondisaffiliative rhetorical questions in Mandarin conversations.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 54(4).
• Wang, Wei. 2021. "The question-response system in Mandarin conversation." Pragmatics 31(4).
• Wang, Wei. 2020. "Grammatical conformity in question-answer sequences: The case of meiyou in Mandarin conversation." Discourse Studies 22(5): 610–631.
• Wang, Wei, & Hongyin Tao. 2020. “From matrix clause to turn expansion The emergence of wo juede ‘I feel/think’ in Mandarin conversational interaction.”  In Maschler et al. (eds.), Emergent Syntax for Conversation: Clausal Patterns and the Organization of Action. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Wang, Wei. 2018. "Discourse uses and prosodic properties of ranhou in spontaneous Mandarin conversation.” Chinese Language and Discourse 9 (1): 1-26.
• Wang, Wei. 2017. “From a conditional marker to a discourse marker: The use of dehua 的话 in natural Mandarin conversation” Journal of Pragmatics 117: 119–138.