Dr. Tanja Collet-Najem holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Université de Montréal (2000). She teaches a number of courses in the fields of theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics and translation. These include: 29-230 Introduction to Linguistics I; 29-231 Introduction to Linguistics II; 29-325 Error Analysis; 29-328 and 29-329 Aspects of Translation I and II; 29-330 Applied Linguistics; 29-332 The History of the French Language; 29-431 Theories of Semantics; 29-435 Bilingualism and 29-434 Aspects of the French Lexicon, as well as other senior level courses.
Her research focuses on two primary areas: languages for special purposes (LSP) and immigrant heritage languages (especially Flemish or Belgian Dutch). In both areas, she adopts a discourse analytic and/or text linguistic approach. With respect to the first area, Dr. Collet studies the syntactic (i.e. combinatorial) and semantic properties of words in text, specifically of terms in specialized discourse.
She has published extensively on this topic in a number of Canadian and European journals, such as
- Meta,
- Terminology,
- TTR, Études sur le texte et ses transformations,
- La banque des mots,
- Le langage et l’homme,
- Discourse & Society,
- Linguistica Antverpiensia NS, etc.
In 2012, she was awarded the Vinay & Darbelnet Prize by the Canadian Association for Translation Studies (CATS) for her research contributions in this area.
With respect to the second area, Dr. Collet studies the attitudes of immigrant communities, specifically the Flemish immigrant community, towards their heritage languages. She has carried out a funded project on the status of Flemish within the Belgian diaspora in Southwestern Ontario, and is presently working on a diachronic discourse analysis of the sole surviving Flemish ethnic newspaper in North America: the Gazette van Detroit.
Her work in this area has been published in a number of Canadian and European journals, such as
- Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies,
- Dutch Crossing, etc.