Robin Queen

Robin Queen is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor of Linguistics, English Language and Literatures and Germanic Languages and Literatures. Her teaching and research center on sociolinguistic questions related to language contact, language ideology, and language change. She has also considered questions concerning the ties between language and social identities. Her work draws on data from a wide variety of sources, including Turkish-German bilinguals, American lesbians, daytime television dramas and American films dubbed into German. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript about language variation in the mass media that is under contract for Wiley-Blackwell.

Professor Queen regularly teaches Language and Discrimination; Language in the Mass Media; Sociolinguistics and Language and Sexuality. She has supervised a wide range of graduate dissertations focused on topics as varied as language change in African American
speech communities in Detroit; Bai (China) language change and ideology and an exemplar theoretic account of sociolinguistic perception. Her students have been successful on the academic job market, with placements in tenure-track and research scientist positions both within and outside of the United States.