Richard Cameron
Assistant Professor of Spanish
(312) 413-5885
rcameron@uic.edu
I work in Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis with additional interests in TESL. In Sociolinguistics, I pursue quantitative dialect research, mostly in Spanish, with the goal of applying or testing linguistic and social theory. My recent work uses Spreading Activation Theory from Psycholinguistics to explain patterns of subject expression in Spanish. Other work investigates the effects of age and gender segregation on degrees of difference between female and male speakers across the life span in Puerto Rico. Unlike class or ethnic differences, sex-based differences are assumed to result from social difference, not social distance. Yet, much Ethnographic research reveals that females and males, both as children and adults, will segregate themselves or will be segregated to varying degrees. Such separation creates social distance. Social distance can lead to linguistic difference. Finally, I am slowly investigating Chicago English across class, gender, and age groups. At this point, I have interviewed speakers, ranging in age from 7 to 83, from Bridgeport, Beverly, Evergreen Park, Rogers Park, Forest Glen, Back of the Yards, and Oak Park. Among these folks, we find a philosopher Detective, a smart X-Ray Technician, a sensitive Stenographer, a poetic Car Salesman, an Electrician who is a great athlete, and a Chinese-American second grader who likes pizza!
Recent publications:
Forthcoming Aging and gendering. Language in Society. 34(1), 2005
2004. Words of the Windy City. Language Magazine. 3(7): 49- 53.
2004. Coauthored with Nydia Flores Ferrán. Perseveration of Subject
Expression across
Regional Dialects of Spanish. Spanish in Context. 1(1): 41-65.
2003 Coedited with Rafael Núñez-Cedeño and Luis Lopez-Carretero.
2003. A
Romance Perspective on Language Knowledge and Use: Selected Papers from the
31st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Chicago, 19-22 April
2001. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.