Prof. Dr. Isabelle Buchstaller
Kontakt
Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum
Beethovenstr. 15
04107 Leipzig,
Haus 4, Zi. 311
Tel.: +49 (0)341 97 37 314
E-mail: i.buchstaller@uni-leipzig.de
Professor for varieties of English
I am a variationist sociolinguist. My main areas of expertise are language variation and change, corpus linguistics and models and methods for collecting and analysing linguistic data. I am particularly interested in dialectal morpho-syntactic and discourse phenomena. I have worked on a range of varieties of English, most notably on Hawaiian Creole, Tyneside English and on Californian English. I am interested in global trends in the English language, which invariably brings up typological questions as regards the underlying causes of linguistic variability and change.
Qualifications
- 1996 Zwischenprüfung / B.A.: Universität Erlangen
- 1999 Staatsexamen and Magister Artium: Universität Konstanz
- 2004 PhD: University of Edinburgh
Previous Positions
- 2004/5 visiting assistant professor: Stanford University
- 2006-2011 lecturer in sociolinguistics, Newcastle University
Current Work
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 am editing a volume that draws together interdisciplinary research on reported speech. The volume, which is entitled Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives will appear with John Benjamins in early 2012. I am also writing a monograph on quotation with Wiley-Blackwell.
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 am also in the process of editing a volume (with Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Al-Moaily) on non-Indo European and non-West African Pidgin and Creole languages.
Selected Publications
- Buchstaller I, and I. van Alphen (eds.) 2012. Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
- Buchstaller I, and I. van Alphen 2012. "Introductory Remarks on New and Old Quotatives". In: Buchstaller I, and I. van Alphen (eds.) Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
- Buchstaller I, Corrigan KP, Holmberg A 2012 (submitted). "A Layered Approach to Idiolectal and Regional Variation in North Eastern England". In: Parrott, J (ed.) Language Faculty and Beyond: Internal and External Variation in Linguistics. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
- Buchstaller I, Corrigan KP 2011. "How To Make Intuitions Succeed". In: McMahon, A, Maguire, W (eds.) Analysing Variation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 30-48.
- Buchstaller I, Corrigan KP 2011. "Judge not lest ye be judged: Exploring methods for the collection of socio-syntactic data". In: Language Variation - European Perspectives III: Selected papers from the 5th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe. Copenhagen, Denmark: Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Buchstaller I 2011. "Quotations across the generations: A multivariate analysis of speech and thought introducers across 4 generations of Tyneside speakers". Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 7 (1), 59-92.
- Barnfield K, Buchstaller I 2010. "Intensifiers on Tyneside: Longitudinal developments and new trends". English World-Wide 31 (3), 252-287.
- Buchstaller I, Rickford J, Traugott E, Wasow T, Zwicky J 2010. "The sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across spoken and internet newsgroup data". Language Variation and Change 22 (2), 191-219.
- Buchstaller I, D’Arcy A 2009. "Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of quotative be like". Journal of Sociolinguistics 13 (3), 291-331.
- Buchstaller I, Corrigan KP 2009. The Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English 2. University of Newcastle upon Tyne: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics. Available at: http://research.ncl.ac.uk /necte2/index.htm.
- Buchstaller I 2009. "The quantitative analysis of morphosyntactic variation: Constructing and quantifying the denominator". Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (4), 1010-1033.
- Buchstaller I 2008. "The localization of global linguistic variants". English World-Wide 29 (1), 15-44.
- Rickford JR, Wasow T, Zwicky A, Buchstaller I 2007. "Intensive and quotative all: something old, something new". American Speech 82 (1), 3-31.
- Buchstaller I 2006. "Diagnostics of age-graded linguistic behaviour: The case of the quotative system". Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (1), 3-30.
- Buchstaller I 2006. "Social stereotypes, personality traits and regional perception displaced: Attitudes towards the 'new' quotatives in the U.K.". Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (3), 362-381.
- Buchstaller I, Traugott EC 2006. "The lady was al demonyak: historical aspects of Adverb all". English Language and Linguistics 10, 345-370.