Christine Mallinson

Christine Mallinson is Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture, Affiliate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, and Director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Baltimore, Maryland, US.

Her research investigates language in its social context, with a focus on American English — specifically Southern U.S., Appalachian, and African American varieties — and addresses some of the most chronic issues that contribute to opportunity gaps in the U.S., particularly in the realm of education.

Her books include Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools (2011) and We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom (2014), co-authored with Anne H. Charity Hudley. She is also the lead editor of Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications (2013) and co-editor of Rural Voices: Language, Identity, and Social Change Across Place (2018).

Her other publications appear in journals including American Speech, Gender & Language, Journal of English Linguistics, Language in Society, and in several book collections, including the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, the Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics, and the Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics. She has served on the editorial board of several journals and served for 10 years as the associate editor of the journal American Speech. She has delivered workshops about language and communication to K-12 teachers at public and independent schools throughout the US as well as to judges and clinicians. She also maintains a blog about language variation in Baltimore, baltimorelanguage.com.