Current lectures

• WiSe 2026

  • English Sociolinguistics
  • Language Variation and Change
  • Introduction to Discourse Analysis
  • Areas and Approaches II Gr. 3
  • Research Colloquium (Forschungskolloquium Linguistik für Master-Studierende)

Past lectures (max. 10)

• SoSe 2026

  • Vorträge im Rahmen der „Feminist Conversations“
  • Areas and Approaches II Gr. 3
  • Queer(ing) Linguistics: Anglistik und Germanistik im Dialog
  • Sociolinguistic Cocktail Speaker’s Series
  • Queering Linguistics
  • Hands-on Research: Language Change across the lifespan
  • English Sociolinguistics
  • Research Colloquium (Forschungskolloquium Linguistik für Master-Studierende)

• WiSe 2025

  • Sociolinguistic Cocktail Speaker’s Series
  • Zotero

since 2014 editor of the series Routledge Studies in Language Change (with Suzanne Wagner).

Monographs and edited books

under contract. North Eastern Englishes (with Claire Childs), Routledge.

in press, 2026. English Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press. Monograph (first author, with Erez Levon).

2026.  Connecting the individual and the community: Contributions from linguistic panel research (first editor, with Karen Beaman), Routledge.

2024.   Time-space (dis-)continuities in the Linguistic Landscape: Studies in the the symbolic re-appropriation of public space (first editor, with Malgorzata Fabiszak and Melody Ross), Routledge.

2021.  Language Variation and Language Change across the Lifespan: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (with Karen Beaman), Routledge.

2021.  special issue of Linguistics Vanguard on “Ideology and commemoration in the urban scape” (with Malgorzata Fabiszak).

2020.  Socio-Grammatical Variation and Change (with Karen Beaman, Sue Fox and James Walker), Routledge.

2019  The Routledge Companion to John Russel Rickford, edited volume (with Renée Blake). Routledge.  

2017  Panel Studies in Language Variation and Change, edited volume (with Suzanne Evans Wagner), Routledge.

2017  Language Variation: European Perspectives VI, edited volume (with Beat Siebenhaar), Benjamins.

2014  Quotatives: New Trends and Sociolinguistic Implications. Monograph, Wiley-Blackwell.

2014  Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters, edited volume (with Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily), Benjamins Series ‘Creole Language Library’.

2012  Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and Cross-disciplinary Perspectives, edited volume (with Ingrid van Alphen), Benjamins Series ‘Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research’.

2011  The Talk of the Toon, CD and booklet, Newcastle University Press (with Karen Corrigan, Adam Mearns and Herman Moisl). 

Articles in journals and edited books

under review. “Adulthood”. In Mary Kohn (ed). Handbook of Language and the Lifespan (with Anne-Marie Moelders, James Grama and Lea Bauernfeind), invited publication.

under review. How variable are phonological constraints over the lifespan?: A trend and panel investigation of vowels in Tyneside English. Proceedings of ICPhS, Vancouver (with James Grama and Lea Bauernfeind).

under review. “The social semiotics of pink in the context of breast cancer survivors dragon boat paddeling”, to be submitted to the special issue on “Corporeal landscapes: Female experiential perspectives”, to be submitted to the Journal of Linguistic Landscapes.

under revision. “Intense change across the lifespan”. Diachronica (first author, with Hannah Sawall, Lea Bauernfeind and Eytan Zweig).

in press a. “Telling stories of and with the body: Artistic tattoos over-writing breast cancer scars”, Journal of Sociolinguistics.     

in press b. “Marshallese English”. In David Britain et al. (eds.), Micronesian Englishes. Mouton de Gruyter (first author, with Nik Willson), invited publication.

in press c. “Von der Rückmeldung zur Lehrkompetenz: Reflexion und Lessons Learned beim Einsatz von Teaching Analysis Polls (TAP) während der Promotionsphase“. In Karen Shire, Nicole Auferkorte-Michaelis, Anna Ebert & Karl-Heinz Stammen (eds.), Empirische Erkenntnisse und reflektierte Praxiserfahrungen, Karriereperspektiven für die Wissenschaft (mit Maiken Bonnes and Birte Bös).

2026 a. “Life-span changes and the history of English”. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), New Cambridge History of the English Language vol 4, Britain, Ireland and Europe , CUP, 49-80  (first author, with Suzanne Evans Wagner), invited publication.

2026b. “Ageing in style: Towards disentangling style-shifting and lifespan change”. In Isabelle Buchstaller & Karen V. Beaman (eds.), Connecting the individual and the community: Contributions from sociolinguistic panel research, New York: Routledge, 17-46 (with James Grama, Anne-Marie Mölders, Lea Bauernfeind and Mirjam Eiswirth).

2026 c. “Towards an understanding of stylistic choices in change across the lifespan”. In Isabelle Buchstaller & Karen V. Beaman (eds.), Connecting the individual and the community: Contributions from sociolinguistic panel research, New York: Routledge, 1-14 (first author, with Karen Beaman).

2026d. “Changes across the lifespan”. In Edith Aldridge, Anne Breitbarth, Katalin É.Kiss, Joe Salmon, Alexandra Simonenko and Adam Ledgeway (eds.), Wiley Blackwell Companion to Diachronic Linguistics, Wiley-Blackwell, 409-436 (first author, with James Grama), invited publication.

2026e. “Bijouification of coal mining semiotics in the gentrified south of Essen, Germany”. Proceedings of Palatial, Salzburg 16-.18.09.2026 (first author, with  Evelyn Ziegler and Maida Kosatica). http://granska.mocnik-science.net/submission#7d24c769-5166-4e9a-91c2-264c4f71f604  

2025a. “Research Methodologies in lingiustic landscape analysis”. In Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz (eds.), Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes and Multilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell, 65-84 (with Seraphim Alvanides).

2025b.       "Learning to be (un)hip in panel data: Exploring quotative be like across the adult life-span". Diachronica 42(5): 555-593 (wiht Anne-Marie Moelders). 

2025c. “Marshallese Englishes”. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes (first author, with James Grama), invited publication.

2025d. “Northern Englishes”. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes (first author, with Dominic Watt), invited publication.

2024a. “Commemorative street naming practices in the border towns Frankfurt (Oder) / Słubice”. In Isabelle Buchstaller, Malgorzata Fabiszak and Melody Ross (eds.),  Time-space (dis)continuities in the LL: Studies in the the symbolic (re-)appropriation of public space (with Anna Weronika Brzezińska, Malgorzata Fabiszak, Seraphim Alvanides, and Tomasz Dyrmo).

2024b.             “Introdution”. In Isabelle Buchstaller, Malgorzata Fabiszak and Melody Ross (eds.),  Time-space (dis)continuities in the LL: Studies in the the symbolic (re-)appropriation of public space (with Malgorzata Fabiszak and Melody Ross).

2024c "Commemorative cityscapes: spatio-temporal patterns in street names in Leipzig, East Germany and Poznan. Language in Society 53(2): 291–320 (first author, with Malgorzata Fabiszak and Seraphim Alvanides).

2024d.             “From winding tower to Eiffel Tower (of the Ruhr Area): The symbolic economy of industrial signs”. Journal of Multimodality and Society (with Maida Kosatica and Evelyn Ziegler).

2024e. “Menopause”. Entry in In Other Words: A Contextualized Dictionary to Problematize Otherness. https://www.iowdictionary.org/

2023a. “Tracking creak from early to late adulthood: A panel study from the North East of England”. Proceedings of ICPhIS, paper ID 167 (with Mirjam Eiswirth and James Grama).

2023b. "Post-educational relaxation in the U-shaped curve: Evidence from a panel study of Tyneside (ing)”. Language Variation and Change 35(3): 325-350 (with Johanna Mechler, James Grama, Mirjam Eiswirth and Lea Bauernfeind).

2023c.  “Towards a taxonomy of arguments for and against street renaming. Exploring the discursive embedding of street name changes in the Leipzig cityscape". Linguistic Landscape 9 (1): 5-35 (with Carolin Schneider and Seraphim Alvanides).

2022a.  “Towards an empirically-based model of age-graded behaviour: Trac(ing) linguistic malleability across the entire adult life-span”. University of Philadelphia Working Papers in Linguistics 28 (2) (with Johanna Mechler, James Grama, Lea Bauernfeind and Mirjam Eiswirth).

2022b.  "Changes in the Commemorative Streetscape of Leipzig over the past 100 years”. Journal of Linguistic Geography 10(2):112-129 (first author, with Seraphim Alvanides and Frauke Griese).

2022c.  “Exploring age-related changes in the realisation of (t): Panel research from Tyneside”. English World Wide 43 (3): 297-329 (with Adam Mearns, Anja Auer and Anne Lerche-Krause)

2021a.  “Ideology and commemoration in urban space”, Linguistics Vanguard. Special issue on Ideology and commemoration in the urban scape (editorial, with Malgorzata Fabiszak).

2021b.  “Community cityscape: Modes of engagement and co-construction of the streetscape”. Linguistics Vanguard. Special issue on Ideology and commemoration in the urban scape.

2021c.  “Ideology and memory in the linguistic landscape: Towards a quantitative approach”. Discourse and Society 32(4): 405-425 (with Malgorzata Fabiszak, Anna Weronika Brezinska, Seraphim Alvanides, Frauke Griese and Carolin Schneider)

2021d.  “Panel research: Theoretical and methodological implications”. In Karen Beaman and Isabelle Buchstaller (eds.), Panel Studies in Language Variation and Change II. Routledge (first author with Karen Beaman).

2021e.  “The origin of panel corpora: The case of Eskilstuna”. In Karen Beaman and Isabelle Buchstaller (eds.), Panel Studies in Language Variation and Change II. Routledge (with Eva Sundgren and Karen Beaman).

2021f.  “Exploring heuristics for conceptualising change across the life-span”. In Karen Beaman and Isabelle Buchstaller (eds.), Panel Studies in Language Variation and Change II. Routledge (first author, with Johanna Mechler and Anne Lerche).

2020a.  “Towards an integrated model of perception: Linguistic architecture and the dynamics of sociolinguistic cognition”. In Karen Beaman, Isabelle Buchstaller, Sue Fox and James Walker (eds.), Socio-Grammatical Variation and Change, Routledge (with Erez Levon and Adam Mearns).

2020b.  “Competing ideologies, competing semiotics: A critical perspective on politically-driven renaming practices in Annaberg-Buchholz, Eastern Germany”. In Evelyn Zigeler and Heiko Marten (eds.),  Linguistic Landscapes im deutschsprachigen Kontext. Frankfurt: Lang (first author, with Seraphim Alvanides, Frauke Griese and Carolin Schneider).

2020c.  “(h) in Marshallese English”. In Miriam Meyerhoff and Eri Kashman (eds.), Special issue of Asia-Pacific Language Variation 6(2): 222 – 249.

2019a.  “Introduction to the Volume”. In Renée Blake and Isabelle Buchstaller (eds), The Routledge Companion to John Russel Rickford. Routledge. (with Renée Blake).  

2019b.  “Instability in the use of a stable variable”. Linguistics Vanguard. Special Issue on Aging. (with Johanna Mechler)

2018a.  “Sociolinguistic variation on Tyneside”. In Sandra Jansen and Natalie Braber (eds.), Sociolinguistics in England. Palgrave (fist author, with Adam Mearns), 215-241.

2018b.  “Linguistic landscapes and the ideology of language choice: The case of the Marshall Islands”. Journal of Linguistic Geography (first author, with Seraphim Alvanides).

2018c.  “Marshallese English: A first sketch”. World Englishes 37(2): 356-383 (first author, with Nik Willson).

2018d.  “Investigating the bilingual landscape of the Marshall Islands”. In Martin Pütz and Neele Mundt (eds.), Expanding the Linguistic LandscapeLinguistic Diversity, Multimodality and the Use of Space as a Semiotic Resource. Lang, Frankfurt. (first author, with Seraphim Alvanides). 203-228.

2017a.  “Using panel data in the sociolinguistic study of variation and change. In Suzanne Evans Wagner and Isabelle Buchstaller (eds.), Panel Studies in Language Variation and Change.  Routledge (first author, with Suzanne Evans Wagner). 1-18.

2017b.  “Levelling across the life-span? Tracing the FACE vowel in panel data from the North East of England”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21(1): 3-33 (first author, with Anne Krause, Anja Auer and Stefanie Otte).

2017c.  “Reported speech”. In Anne Barron, Peter Grundy and Gu Yueguo (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics. Routledge, Oxford, 399-417.

2017d.  “Introduction”.  In Isabelle Buchstaller and Beat Siebenhaar (eds.), Language Variation: European Perspectives VI, edited volume (with Beat Siebenhaar), Benjamins. VII-XVI.

2016a.  “Investigating the Effect of Socio-Cognitive Salience and Speaker-Based Factors in Morpho-Syntactic Life-Span Change”. Journal of English Linguistics 44(2): 199-229

2016b.  “The Talk of the Toon: A linguistic time capsule for the Google generation”. In Karen Corrigan, Adam Mearns and Hermann Moisl (eds.), Digitizing Corpora, Vol. 3, Palgrave, London (with Karen Corrigan, Adam Mearns and Hermann Moisl), 177-210.

2015a.  “Expanding the circle to Learner English: Investigating quotative marking in a German student community”. American Speech 90(4):441-478 (with Julia Davydova).

2015b.  “Morphosyntactic features of Northern English”. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Researching Northern English. Benjamins (first author, with Karen Corrigan), 71-89.

2015c.  “Perception, cognition, and linguistic structure: The effect of linguistic modularity and cognitive style on sociolinguistic processing”. Language Variation and Change 27(3): 319-348 (with Erez Levon).

2015d.  “Exploring linguistic malleability across the life-span: Age-specific patterns in quotative use”. Language in Society 44(4):  457 - 496.

2014a.  “Television and language use. What do we mean by influence and how do we detect it?”. Invited commentary. In Janis Androutsopolous (ed.), Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change. De Gruyter. 205-213.

2014b.  “Non-Indo-European and Non-West African contact languages: An introduction”. In Isabelle Buchstaller, Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily (eds.), Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters. Benjamins (first author, with Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily).

2014c.  “Sampling”. In Robert Podeswa and Devani Sharma (eds.), Research Methods in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 74-95 (first author, with Ghada Khattab).

2013a.  “T-to-R and the Northern Subject Rule: questionnaire-based spatial, social and structural linguistics”. Journal of English Linguistics 17(1): 85-128 (first author, with Karen Corrigan, Anders Holmberg, Patrick Honeybone, and Warren Maguire).

2013b.  “Employing geographical principles for sampling in state of the art dialectological projects” Journal of Linguistic Geography 2 (first author, with Seraphim Alvanides)

2012  “Introductory remarks on new and old quotatives”. In Isabelle Buchstaller and Ingrid van Alphen (eds.), Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Benjamins, xii - xxx (first author, with Ingrid van Alphen).

2011a.  “Quotations across the generations: A multivariate analysis of speech and thought introducers across 5 generations of Tyneside speakers”. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory: 59-92 (Special issue on Corpus Linguistics and Sociolinguistics.

2011b.  “‘Judge not lest ye be judged’: Exploring methods for the collection of socio-syntactic data”. In Frans Gregersen, Pia Quist and Jeffrey Parrot (eds.), Language Variation - European Perspectives III. John Benjamins, 149-160 (first author, with Karen Corrigan).

2011c.  “Making intuitions work: Testing instruments for measuring dialect syntax”. In Warren Maguire and April McMahon (eds.), Analysing Variation in English. Cambridge University Press, 30-48 (first author, with Karen Corrigan).

2010a.  “The sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across real and apparent time”. Language Variation and Change 22: 1-29 (first author, with John Rickford, Elizabeth Traugott, Tom Wasow and Arnold Zwicky).

2010b.  “Intensification on Tyneside: Longitudinal developments and new trends”. English World Wide 31:252-287 (with Kate Barnfield).

2009a.  “Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of quotative like”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13(3): 291-332 (first author, with Alexandra D’Arcy).

2009b.  “The quantitative analysis of morphosyntactic variation: Constructing and quantifying the denominator”. The Linguistic Compass 3.

2008  “The localization of global linguistic variants”. English World Wide 29(1): 15-44.

2007  “Intensive and Quotative ALL: Something old, something new”. American Speech 82(1): 3-31 (second author, with John Rickford, Thomas Wasow, Arnold Zwicky and Elizabeth Traugott).

2006a.  “‘The lady was all demonyak’: Historical aspects of adverbial all”. English Language and Linguistics 10(2): 345-370 (first author, with Elizabeth Traugott).

2006b.  “Social stereotypes, personality traits and regional perceptions displaced: Attitudes towards the ‘new’ quotatives in the UK”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(3): 362-381.

2006c.  “Globalization and local reappropriation: The case of the new quotatives”. In Christa Dürenscheid and Jürgen Spitzmüller (eds.), Trends and Developments in Youth Language Research. Lang, 315-334.

2006d.  “Diagnostics of age graded linguistic behavior”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(1): 3-30.

2005  “Putting perception to the reality test: The case of go and like”. University of Philadelphia Working Papers in Linguistics 10(2): 61-75.

2004a.  “Newcomers to the pool of quotatives: Like and go”. In Pilar Garcés Conejos, Reyes Gómez Moron, Lucia Fernández Amaya and Manuel Padilla Cruz (eds.), Current Trends in Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics. University of Sevilla Press, 219-240.

2004b.  “Comparing perceptions and reality: Newcomers to the quotative pool”. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 13:1-14.

2003  The co-occurrence of quotatives with mimetic performances. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 12:1-9.

2002  He goes and I’m like: The new quotatives re-visited. Internet Proceedings of the University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Conference. [available on-line: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~pgc%20/archive/2002/proc02/buchstaller02.pdf]

2001  An alternative view of like: Its grammaticalization in conversational American English and beyond. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 11: 21-41.

Web-based publication:

Data-base with dual interface targeting two groups of users:

• Researchers in linguistics, sociology or oral history: The Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/decte/): Collection of interviews (transcripts and recordings) conducted in the Tyneside area between 1960-2010, including user-handbook.
• Schools, museums and heritage groups: The Talk of the Toon (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/decte/toon/index.html), interactive website which integrates recordings from the 1960s to the 2000s with still/moving images.

Language Variation and Change

I am interested in reported speech/thought and in intensification, two areas of the linguistic system that have been the locus of fast and far-reaching changes. I have done research on California youth trends, on globalization phenomena and on attitudes to rapid language change phenomena. Together with my colleague Ingrid van Alphen (University of Amsterdam) I have edited a volume that draws together interdisciplinary research on reported speech: Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives (John Benjamins). I have also written a monograph on quotation entitled Quotatives: New Trends and Sociolinguistic Implications (Wiley-Blackwell).

I was the holder of a 4-year Marie Curie CIG grant, which investigates “Diagnostics of linguistic change: Mapping language change in real and apparent time”.

From May 27th to 29th 2015 Leipzig University hosted ICLAVE8. Check out our webpage here: conference.uni-leipzig.de/iclave8/index.html

Dialectology

Together with my colleagues Karen Corrigan and Anders Holmberg, I have developed and tested methodologies to trace (morpho-)syntactic and discourse variability across social and geographical space. I have also written on the use of up-to-date geographical models in linguistic analysis (with Seraphim Alvanides). In collaboration with colleagues at Newcastle University and Edinburgh University I have investigated the patterning of a number of morpho-syntacic and phonological phenomena in the English-Scottish Borderland. Karen Corrigan, Hermann Moisl, Adam Mearns and myself have collated a large corpus of recordings and transcriptions of Tyneside English speech, the Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/decte), which spans recordings from informants born between 1895 and 1993.

Language contact

At the beginning of my academic career, I analysed the way speakers encode causality, concessivity and conditionality in Hawaiian Creole. I continue to be interested in the outcome of language contact, both on a local and on a global scale. Together with colleagues at Stanford (John Rickford, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Tom Wasow and Arnold Zwicky) and with Alexandra D’Arcy (University of Victoria) I have investigated the global repercussions of the fast spreading innovative quotatives and intensifiers. I have edited a volume (with Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Al-Moaily) on non-Indo European and non-West African Pidgin and Creole languages: Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa - Europe encounters (Benjamins). With Julia Davydova, I examined the use of new English trends by speakers of German.

My most recent project investigates the varieties which result from contact between speakers of Marshallese and English in the Marshall Islands. This project is funded by the DFG and I am collaborating with Irene Taafaki (USP, Majuro), Nik Willson (CMI, Majuro) and Robert Early (USP, Vanuatu). Check out my blog here: http://islandlanguage.weebly.com/.

• 2004/5 visiting assistant professor, Stanford University
• 2006-2011 lecturer in sociolinguistics, Newcastle University
• 2011-2017 professor for varieties of English, University of Leipzig, Germany