I am developing a comprehensive online archive and analysis suite for the sociolinguistic interview collection of the NCLLP. My primary interests in this project (perhaps my primary interests in linguistics currently) are in addressing some of the following questions and issues:

• Transcription as theory (cf. Jane Edwards 2001, Elinor Ochs 1979)
• What is (socio)linguistic data? How can we move our representations of data (e.g., variable tabulations, transcripts, even recordings) closer to the 'actual' data (speech events) they represent?
• Can natural speech (audio) data be treated as database-able data?
• How can computers enhance our ability to interface with and analyze (socio)linguistic data?
• How can we incorporate advances from corpus and computational approaches to the sociolinguistic analysis of natural speech (audio) data?

The NC SLAAP server houses some general information about the project.

[ http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/ ]

An overview of the project appeared in the Penn Working Papers in Linguistics (this article is available below and on my publications page).

Much of my substantive work currently centers on examining language variation as its contextualized within the particulars of specific interactions. This ranges from the examination of "standard" linguistic variables (e.g., copula absence in AAE) situated in their discourse contexts to new variationist analyses of "interaction variables" like pause and speech rate. Much this work leverages the new tools and models developed in NC SLAAP to more rigorously analyze spoken language data.

Walt Wolfram and I are examining the speech of African Americans in formally recognized community leadership positions (e.g. mayor, commissioner) in a variety of communities in North Carolina in order to investigate the notion of localized language norms and language variation. We are asking questions like: how does the speech of these leaders reflect (or not reflect) community norms and what sorts of situational style/code/register shifts do these leaders exhibit?

Our analysis indicates that a host of factors (such as the relative autonomy of a community, the primary public service constituency, the local social affiliations and divisions within the community, and the socialized demands of public presentation) are important in understanding the use of local vernacular and mainstream standard variants by these speakers. The analysis demonstrates further that local social structure and the establishment of covert, endocentric language norms may play a significant role in mitigating the traditional type of standard-vernacular dichotomy in small-community contexts where "everybody knows everybody."

A project I'm very interested in, but have been neglecting recently, looks at language use on the online message board of a fan website for an Icelandic pop singer (no, not Bjork). In particular, I have been examining how participants in this online community negotiate language use (between Icelandic and English) and make use of code switching to present and align their own identities and the identity of the online community in different ways with global 'pop culture' norms.