51ÉçÇø

Ohio Language and Culture Project

Education

Ph.D. in Speech and Language Science, 51ÉçÇø

Teaching and Research

• Forensic aspects of language variation
• Perceptual Dialectology
• Sociolinguistic Corpus construction in support of efforts in Language Documentation and Maintenance

I have a background in both Applied Linguistics and Speech-Language Pathology. I earned my M.A. in Linguistics at 51ÉçÇø (1998) and my Ph.D. in Speech and Language Science from the College of Health Sciences and Professions (2008), also at 51ÉçÇø. My primary areas of teaching and research include: Impacts of Cognitive & Cultural constructs on speech & language development, use and comprehension; Language Development (L1 & L2); Language Variation/Dialects; Phonetics & Phonology.

In addition to my work on campus, I also run a Cultural Linguistics Study Abroad in Scotland where we explore Scots and Gaelic languages and cultures to gain an understanding of their contributions to varieties of American English, as well as to the cultural and social history of our Appalachian region. I am always looking for ways to get others excited about language study and the application of linguistic study in related disciplines. Check in each semester for the opportunity to study linguistics application in your field! A few examples of rotating offerings include:

• American Dialects
• Language and Gender
• Forensic Linguistics
• World Englishes
• Bilingualism
• Language Contact
• Language Construction

Current Projects

• Construction of a regional language corpus (SOLP – Southeast Ohio Language Project)
• Comparison studies across age groups and time periods examining changes in regional language forms: phonetic & morphosyntactic
• New course and certificate development