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Barbara Johnstone (born March 24, 1952) is an American professor of rhetoric and linguistics at
Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technolog ...
. She specializes in discourse structure and function, sociolinguistics, rhetorical theory, and methods of text analysis. She was the editor in chief of '' Language in Society'' from 2005 to 2013, and is the editor of ''Pittsburgh Speech & Society,'' a website about Pittsburgh English for non-linguists. She has published several books, including ''Speaking Pittsburghese ''(2013) and ''Discourse Analysis, ''2nd Ed''.'' (2008). She has also written for '' The New York Times.''


Education

Johnstone received her bachelor of arts in linguistics from Yale University. She received her master's and her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Michigan.


Career

She taught at
Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th st ...
(1981-1985), Georgetown University (1985-1987), and
Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M Unive ...
(1987-1997, followed by her current position of professor of rhetoric and linguistics at
Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technolog ...
since 1997. Johnstone has also published papers on gender and language, Arabic language discourse, as well as many other linguistic topics. On top of that, she also wrote a book called the "Linguistic Individual," discussing self-expression in language.


Research on Pittsburghese

Johnstone is recognized as an expert on
Pittsburgh English Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially ap ...
, locally known as "Pittsburghese." Her research is concerned with how the dialect is "constructed through local talk, and talk about talk," connecting "people's understandings of language and place" with language change. Her 2013 book ''Speaking Pittsburghese: The Story of a Dialect'', is a summation of her scholarly work on
Pittsburgh English Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially ap ...
. The book is a sociolinguistic analysis of the history of Pittsburgh English and how it has changed over time, with a focus on the process of enregisterment and how the dialect is linked to local identity. It also explores the history and local use of some of Pittsburgh's most emblematic words, including "
yinz ''Yinz'' (see below for other spellings) is a second-person plural pronoun used mainly in Western Pennsylvania English, most prominently in Pittsburgh, but it is also found throughout the cultural region known as Appalachia, located within the ge ...
," "nebby," and "dahntahn." Johnstone also focuses on phonological features of "pittsburghese" such as the monophthongal /aw/.


Research on Texas women

Johnstone has written about
style-shifting In sociolinguistics, a style is a set of linguistic variants with specific social meanings. In this context, social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes, or beliefs. Linguistic variation is at the heart of the concept of l ...
among Texas women. In her article, "Uses of southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women", Johnstone delves into how Texas women use different ways of talking, which range from "automatic and nonstrategic" to "very planned and strategic". In another article, titled "Sociolinguistic Resources, Individual Identities, and Public Speech Styles of Texas Women", Johnstone studied how women in Texas form linguistic identities based on their own individual backgrounds, such as ethnicity, region of living, as well as the linguistic models they experienced in their lives.


References


External links


Selected Works of Barbara Johnstone (articles available for download)

Ep. 9 of the Podcast ''Re:verb'' June 17, 2018 "How does language influence our identity (and vice-versa)? (w/ Barbara Johnstone)"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnstone, Barbara Carnegie Mellon University faculty Living people Linguists from the United States Women linguists 1952 births Academic journal editors