Welcome to my website! This site contains information about my research, useful resources for students interested in linguistics or the Bible as literature,
and detailed information about all of the specialty courses that I teach.

I am an Associate Professor in the English Department at Auburn University. I received my PhD from the University of Georgia. My special interests include the dynamics of language change in English over the last thousand years, Old English language and literature, and cultural views of language usage.

I have edited a large journal issue and co-edited two books devoted to essays in sociolinguistics and dialectology, and published in American Speech, Language, The SECOL Review, and other journals. Honors include two Fulbright awards and NEH Seminar participation. My current projects include research into the sociolinguistic forces behind dialect change and lexical change, the development of relative clauses in English, and lexical collocation. I was president of the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics in 1998-99.