Research:
My early research, starting with my dissertation, “The Effect of Induced and Perceived Expertise on the Language Performance of Native and Nonnative Speakers” (1985, Columbia University), focused on application of H. Giles’ conception of Accommodation Theory in social psychology as a means of explaining systematic variation in language use when nonnative speakers and native speakers of English are interacting with each other. My interest in people’s perceptions of each other when they are interacting, and how those perceptions affect their language use, led to further research on identity and to studies of the influence of relative content expertise in native-nonnative interactions. This line of research largely involved my use of a positivist, quasi-experimental paradigm.
An early, secondary area of research activity for me concerned my (continuing) interest in variation in World Englishes. Having lived in Kenya for several years, I collected and analyzed language data and documents, producing several studies of language policy in Kenya and characteristics of Kenyan English. The studies employed a descriptive analysis.
In the last five to ten years, I have continued my interest in interactional language use, but with a particular focus on classroom discourse. This has involved my continued learning of sociocultural, critical, and poststructuralist/postmodern perspectives. My current focus has involved, as well, a long process of learning about qualitative research approaches, as I consider them more compelling (than the positivist paradigm of my earlier research) for understanding language use in its context. Having made the major move from a positivistic to a poststructural, qualitative paradigm, I have become very interested in the research process per se and the theory/method relationship in research.
A fortunate opportunity for studying classroom discourse came when Cecilia Ford and I, in the late 1990s, won a contract from the U.S. Department of Education for a longitudinal study of native and nonnative speakers’ classroom discourse in subject matter classes in an urban, diverse high school (“The Socialization of Diverse Learners into Subject Matter Discourse,” OERI Award #R305A600005). The project, part of the Center for Learning and Achievement (CELA), enabled us to conduct a microethnography over four years, of classroom discourse in selected science and social studies classes. The resulting database, containing videotaped interactions, fieldnotes, focus group information, interviews, etc, has provided a rich source of data for my current analyses and publications on classroom discourse and methodology.