Q: What is your area of specialty?
A: In a phrase: Non-standard Syntactic Variation. Broadly, I’m a combination of a sociolinguist, a theoretical syntactician, and perhaps a bit of a dialectologist. I usually combine these, as I study how social factors affect variation in sentence structure especially in Southern English and Appalachian English.
Q: What was the title of your master’s thesis or dissertation?
A: Dissertation: “This might could help us better understand syntactic variation: The double modal construction in Tennessee English”
MA Thesis: “What do yall think?: A study of language attitudes in the South”
Q: What is your most recent publication?
A: Dr. Childs and I have been collaborating for several years now on a study of subregional variation in Appalachian English among speakers under 30. My most recent publications from the project:
J. Daniel Hasty and Becky Childs. 2021. Investigating Appalachian Englishes: Subregional variation in the new Appalachia. Journal of Appalachian Studies 27.1: 69-88.
J. Daniel Hasty. 2020. Just what and where are Appalachian Englishes: Subregional language variation in Appalachia. In Kirk Hazen (ed.) Appalachian Englishes in the Twenty-first Century. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 3-19.
Q: What is your favorite assignment to assign?
A: In my ENGL 350 “Language Variation in North America” class, I have students do several rounds of sociolinguistic data collection, which they eventually write an article type paper on for the Final.
Q: What was the last book you read?
A: Rural voices: Language, identity, and social change across place, edited by Elizabeth Seale and Christine Mallinson (for a solicited book review). The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R Tolkien (for fun).
Q: What are your favorite events on campus?
A: I have really enjoyed running the English Futures Speaker Series.
Q: Where is your favorite place to eat on campus?
A: A sack lunch in my office.
Q: What do you enjoy most about CCU?
A: I like the growth in the university that I’ve seen since 2012.
