David Durian
I am a sociolinguist and historical sociophonetician. In my work, I focus on language change and variation in 19th, 20th, and 21st Century American English from the perspective of the instrumental analysis of sound change and variation trends in the vowel systems of European American and African American native speakers of American English. Currently, my work focuses on three geographic locations in the US: Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; and Eastern Pennsylvania. In my work in each location, I focus on variation across the entire vowel system among speakers.
In Columbus, my work, presented via my dissertation entitled A New Perspective on Vowel Variation across the 19th and 20th Centuries in Columbus, OH, looked at vowel variation and language change trends among 4 generations of speakers born between 1896 and 1991. In Chicago, my work focuses on vowel variation and language change trends among 5 generations of speakers, born between 1875 and 1995. In Eastern Pennsylvania, our work is just getting started, but I hope to have more to report soon.
Recently, I have also taken up an interest in the interface between rhetorical theory and discourse analysis and have begun to write a few manuscripts in this area. I may or may not end up trying to move these along to publication. Some are posted here, along my sociophonetics publications and manuscripts (my "main interest"), so that readers may give me feedback on them.
Supervisors: Donald Winford
In Columbus, my work, presented via my dissertation entitled A New Perspective on Vowel Variation across the 19th and 20th Centuries in Columbus, OH, looked at vowel variation and language change trends among 4 generations of speakers born between 1896 and 1991. In Chicago, my work focuses on vowel variation and language change trends among 5 generations of speakers, born between 1875 and 1995. In Eastern Pennsylvania, our work is just getting started, but I hope to have more to report soon.
Recently, I have also taken up an interest in the interface between rhetorical theory and discourse analysis and have begun to write a few manuscripts in this area. I may or may not end up trying to move these along to publication. Some are posted here, along my sociophonetics publications and manuscripts (my "main interest"), so that readers may give me feedback on them.
Supervisors: Donald Winford
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (15)
Uploads
Papers by David Durian
Drafts by David Durian
Ultimately, as my analysis demonstrates, the genre of the linguistics article proves interesting to study for several reasons from the perspective of genre theory. First, it provides us with a rather salient example of how genre conventions track the social action of critical commentary versus the social action of scientific study within a given field of study. Unlike many of the other scientific fields that have been studied in genre studies previously, linguistics provides a unique field for study, one that transformed quickly from one that was mostly a humanistic enterprise before the late 19th Century--that is, one concerned primarily with language history and philology from the perspective of language as a lifeform--to one that become increasingly a scientific one, particularly from middle of the 20th Century onward. As the discussion of the material in Chapters 4 and 5 will show, this transformation was not only rapid, but also quite complete, once it took hold. In demonstrating this transformation, I provide the field of genre studies with a robust example of what Bazerman was attempting to demonstrate in his work on the Royal Society--the fact that a new relationship among intellectuals was emerging with the turn to the scientific in linguistics as spearheaded within variationist studies by the work of William Labov; thus, a new kind of standard writing emerged to mediate between them.
A second area where my study makes a contribution to genre studies is its use and implementation of a new kind of hybrid methodology for approaching the study of the genre of scientific writing, by combining Miller's focus on genre as social action with the emphasis on the structural components of the scientific article one finds in the work of researchers such as Swales, and the structural and organizational elements of professional texts of researchers such as Bhatia and Berkenkoter and Huckin. My analysis investigates the structural aspects of the genre by employing Swales's CARS (Creating a Research Space) model for exploring the structural aspects of introductions found in my data corpus throughout Chapters 4, 5, and 6, while also considering the organizational and structural elements of the writing more generally within the context of larger movements in the field. In addition, it mixes this approach to the social and the structural with Bazerman's context-rich approach of incorporating a detailed analysis and discussion of the rhetorical situation and historical contexts surrounding the development of genre conventions within a field of study. In doing so, this hybrid approach provides new insights into the genre of the research article more generally.
Ultimately, as my analysis demonstrates, the genre of the linguistics article proves interesting to study for several reasons from the perspective of genre theory. First, it provides us with a rather salient example of how genre conventions track the social action of critical commentary versus the social action of scientific study within a given field of study. Unlike many of the other scientific fields that have been studied in genre studies previously, linguistics provides a unique field for study, one that transformed quickly from one that was mostly a humanistic enterprise before the late 19th Century--that is, one concerned primarily with language history and philology from the perspective of language as a lifeform--to one that become increasingly a scientific one, particularly from middle of the 20th Century onward. As the discussion of the material in Chapters 4 and 5 will show, this transformation was not only rapid, but also quite complete, once it took hold. In demonstrating this transformation, I provide the field of genre studies with a robust example of what Bazerman was attempting to demonstrate in his work on the Royal Society--the fact that a new relationship among intellectuals was emerging with the turn to the scientific in linguistics as spearheaded within variationist studies by the work of William Labov; thus, a new kind of standard writing emerged to mediate between them.
A second area where my study makes a contribution to genre studies is its use and implementation of a new kind of hybrid methodology for approaching the study of the genre of scientific writing, by combining Miller's focus on genre as social action with the emphasis on the structural components of the scientific article one finds in the work of researchers such as Swales, and the structural and organizational elements of professional texts of researchers such as Bhatia and Berkenkoter and Huckin. My analysis investigates the structural aspects of the genre by employing Swales's CARS (Creating a Research Space) model for exploring the structural aspects of introductions found in my data corpus throughout Chapters 4, 5, and 6, while also considering the organizational and structural elements of the writing more generally within the context of larger movements in the field. In addition, it mixes this approach to the social and the structural with Bazerman's context-rich approach of incorporating a detailed analysis and discussion of the rhetorical situation and historical contexts surrounding the development of genre conventions within a field of study. In doing so, this hybrid approach provides new insights into the genre of the research article more generally.