Research
My teaching and research center on sociolinguistic questions related to language contact, language ideology, sociolinguistic perception, and language change. I also consider questions concerning the ties between language and social identities, particularly queer identities. My work draws on data from a wide variety of sources, including Turkish-German bilinguals, American lesbians, daytime television dramas, American films dubbed into German, experimental data concerning sociolinguistic perception, and shepherds interacting with stockdogs. My book, Vox Popular: The Surprising Life of Language in the Mass Media (Wiley, 2015) explores how language variation functions within the fictional mass media.
Areas of Research
- Human-canine interaction w/language
- Language contact and change
- Language, gender and sexuality
- Intonation
- Language variation in the media
Research Activity
- Ethnography of communication among stockdog handlers. 2010-pres.
- Language variation in the popular media, 1996-pres.
- Psycholinguistic assessments of New Media errors (w/Julie Boland), 2013-pres.
- Grammatical gender and the interpretation of gender (with Julie Boland), 2008-2011.
- The new discourse of dogs (with Andrei Markovitz), 2006-2009.
- Longitudinal research on language change among Turkish-German bilinguals, 2002-2011.
- Language, gender and sexual identity research conducted in Texas and Ohio, 1996-1999
- Perceptual research with native speakers of German and Turkish conducted in Austin, TX, 1995-1996
- Ethnographic fieldwork with Turkish and German children in two German elementary schools, Hessen, Germany, 1993-1994
- Three months descriptive research on K’iche’ (Maya) conducted in Austin, TX with a native speaker, 1992
- Three months acoustic research on Turkish vowel harmony conducted in Austin, TX with a native speaker, 1992
- Three months of research on language attitudes conducted in Washington, DC and Dallas, TX, 1990
