| Research Interests | I am a Ph.D. candidate and research fellow in the Department of
Linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. I specialize in
sociolinguistics and the overlapping fields of pragmatics,
discourse analysis, and linguistic anthropology. My dissertation research
draws from narratives to examine the linguistic resources that women in
Pakistani Muhajir families use to construct and project their identities.
Prominent among these are: (1) code-switching, through which speakers
exploit contrasts between different language varieties to index different
discursive functions, and (2)constructed dialogue, through which they
position themselves in relation to others and with respect to agency and
authority. In 1997-98, I also studied ideologies of language and "race" in
the wake of the Ebonics (African-American English) controversy in the USA.
A co-authored paper on features and functions of the mocking of
African-American English by non-African Americans appeared in the Journal
of Sociolinguistics and earned me honorary membership in the American
Dialect Society. Uniting my disparate research areas is my overarching
interest in the analysis of pragmatic and expressive uses of language in
everyday practices that create identities. I am enjoying Pakistan, where I
studied Urdu and was an AIPS pre-doctoral fellow in 1999-2000.
Urdu-language writer and poet Asher Mahmood is working with me this
year. Asher has published short stories in Adab Dost, Takhil,
and Ashkal, and poetry in Tastir, Mah-e-Nau, and Mazdoor Jad-o-Jihad. In
addition, he is founder and editor of the independent
Literary News in Lahore. Fulbright research scholar Cabeiri Robinson and
Asher produced his first collection of poetry, Mitti ka Khuda, as
a mehfil-e-nazm on audiocassette in 1999, and the cassette is being
reviewed in the Annual of Urdu Studies. Asher plans to start his
Ph.D. studies in Urdu literature in fall 2001.
(asher676@usa.net) |
