Professor Dr. Shana Poplack

Biography

Shana Poplack is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ottawa, where she has made substantial contributions to the study of linguistic variation and change. Her work encompasses various fields, including bilingual language mixing, language contact, grammatical convergence, and the genesis of African American Vernacular English. She employs theoretical and methodological insights gained from her extensive research in these areas to inform her understanding of normative prescription and the role of educational institutions in influencing linguistic change. A prominent figure in her field, she has been appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Member of the Order of Canada, and she served as Canada Research Chair in Linguistics from July 2001 to July 2022. Poplack has directed the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa since September 1982 and is actively involved in teaching, with recent courses focusing on sociolinguistics and urban dialectology.

Research Interests

Courses