Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Sociolinguistics Research Lab at the University of Victoria; Author of Eight-hundred years of ‘like’.

I am a quantitative variationist sociolinguist in the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Cultures. I am fascinated by variation in language and I recognize it as meaningful—both linguistically and socially. I am particularly intrigued by longitudinal change and the ways in which the structural conditions on variation are maintained across generations of language users. The history of a language is reflected in daily use, alongside the identities of individual users. These facts keep me excited about my research and my students’ research, and I celebrate that we all use language differently while at the same time following a shared set of rules, conditions, constraints, and meanings.

Teaching

Toronto – Christchurch – Victoria

Over the span of more than 20 years, I have taught classes at the University of Toronto, the University of Canterbury, and the University of Victoria. These include a range of linguistics classes, both general introductory courses and specialist courses, and an introductory seminar in humanities research. A sample of my classes includes Introduction to Language, Linguistics of Story-telling, Grammaticalization, Language and Society, Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Language Variation and Change, Language and Ethnicity, Language and the Internet, Language Ideologies, Dialect and Education, and Encountering Humanities Research.

Sociolinguistics
Research Lab

2010 – present

I established the Sociolinguistics Research Lab (SLRL) at UVic in 2010. An active research hub, the SLRL is home to undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting research students, and visiting scholars. Located in the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Cultures, it offers multiple workstations, private and secure server space, field recording equipment, a button box, and a sound-attenuated recording booth.

The SLRL has hosted students from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Northeastern University, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa, and University of York.

Visiting Professors include Allan Bell, Chloe Diskin Holdaway, Carla Hudson Kam, Miriam Locher, Rob Podesva, Celeste Rodríguez Louro, Nicole Rosen, Sali Tagliamonte, Walt Wolfram, and Malcah Yaeger-Dror.

Corpora

Constructed – Stewarded – Licensed

I started constructing sociolinguistic corpora during my MA at Memorial University of Newfoundland. As a result, the SLRL holds multiple private sociolinguistic corpora, constructed by me and by my students, as well as by others who have entrusted their materials to me. The SLRL also holds site licenses for a number of licensed corpora:

  • Constructed: Canterbury Regional Corpus (2006), St. John’s Youth English Corpus (2000), Spoken English in Victoria Corpus (2010–), Diachronic Corpus of Victoria English (2012), Synchronic Corpus of Victoria English (2012), Kids Talk Corpus (2016–2022)

  • Stewarded: Edinburgh Sociolinguistic Survey (1975), Survey of Vancouver English (1978–1981)

  • Licensed: Buckeye Speech Corpus, A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760, Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edition, Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Modern English, Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English, International Corpus of English (Canada, East Africa, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, SPICE-Ireland, Jamaica, Philippines, Singapore, US)

At the heart of my research is the recognition that any stage of a language is a historical artifact. I regularly ask “What is the relation between synchrony (now) and diachrony (the past)?” As a result, themes that emerge in much of my work are that often what seems new is not, and that current features of a variety are deeply rooted in the history of that variety. I work primarily in discourse-pragmatics and in morphosyntax, and I specialize in English Linguistics.

My work has been generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC|CRSH), the Faculty of Humanities at UVic, the UVic Scholar’s Fund, the UVic Internal Research Grants Program, the UVic Work Study Program, and the College of Arts and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Canterbury.

Public Engagement Matters

  • I believe in working with the public to increase education, knowledge, and understanding about language in social context. I have over 20 years of experience with media (tv, radio, print), appear regularly on podcasts, and speak in a range of venues, from schools to coffee shops to museums.

    “I have resisted the term sociolinguistics for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.” —William Labov, 1972

Throughout my life and my career, I have had the great privilege of living, learning, and working uninvited on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Huron-Wendat, Seneca, Mississaugas of the Credit, Māori, Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples. It is with deep gratitude that I acknowledge them all.