Tracey Weldon

Associate Professor

Office: 215 Humanities Office Building
(803) 777-2074
weldont@mailbox.sc.edu

Education

Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1998

Specialization Areas

• Morphosyntactic variation
• Gullah and African American English

Recent Courses

See Course Descriptions for detailed information.

• Ling 541/Engl 439R/Wost 555/Anth 555: Language and Gender
• Ling 442/Engl 457/Anth 442/Afro 442 : African-American English
• Ling 600/Engl 680: Survey of Linguistics
• Ling 740: Introduction to Sociolinguistics
• Ling 745/Engl 782: Varieties of American English
• Ling 840: Seminar in Language Variation

Current Research Project(s)

I am a quantitative sociolinguist, specializing in morpho-syntactic variation, with a particular focus on Gullah and African-American English (AAE). I am currently working on a book-length project examining the use of AAE by speakers in middle-class communities.

Publications

2006. Labov, William, Sharon Ash, Maya Ravindranath, Tracey Weldon, Maciej Baranowski, and Naomi Nagy. Listeners’ sensitivity to the frequency of sociolinguistic variables. In The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 12: 2. Maya Ravindranath and Michael Friesner, eds. 105-129.

2005. Gullah Gullah Islands. American Voices: How dialects differ from coast to coast. Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward, eds. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. 178-182. (Reprint of Weldon, 2002. Gullah Gullah Islands. Language Magazine. February edition. 31, 33-34).

2005. Review article on The development of African American English, by Walt Wolfram and Erik Thomas, Oxford and Malden: Blackwell, 2002; and The historical evolution of earlier African American English: An empirical comparison of early sources, by Alexander Kautzsch, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. Language 81.2. 478-494.

2004. Gullah: Phonology. A Handbook of Varieties of English 1: 2. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 393-406.

2003. Copula variability in Gullah. Language variation and change 15: 1. 37-72.

2003. Revisiting the Creolist Hypothesis: Copula Variability in Gullah and Southern Rural AAVE. American Speech 78: 2. 171-191.

2002. Gullah Gullah Islands. Language Magazine. February edition. 31, 33-34.

2000. Reflections on the Ebonics controversy. American Speech (Diamond Anniversary Edition): 75: 3. 275-277.

2000. Haller, Cynthia R., Victoria J. Gallagher, Tracey L. Weldon, Richard M. Felder. Dynamics of peer education in cooperative learning workgroups. Journal of Engineering Education 89: 3. 285-293.

1999. Haller, Cynthia R., Victoria J. Gallagher, Tracey L. Weldon, Richard M. Felder. Dynamics of peer interactions in cooperative learning. American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), Proceedings.

1998. Exploring the AAVE-Gullah Connection: A comparative study of copula variability. Ph.D. dissertation. The Ohio State University.

1996. Past marking in Gullah. The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 3: 1. Miriam Meyerhoff, ed. 63-72.

1994. Variability in negation in African-American Vernacular English. Language variation and change 6: 3. 359-397.

1994. Jannedy, Stefanie, Robert Poletto, Tracey Weldon, eds. The Language Files. 6th edition. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Recent Presentations

2005. “Listeners’ sensitivity to the frequency of sociolinguistic variables.” William Labov, Sharon Ash, Maya Ravindranath, Tracey Weldon, Maciej Baranowski, and Naomi Nagy. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (in English) (nwav(e)), NYC, New York.

2004. “African American English and the Middle Classes: Exploring the other end of the continuum.” nwav(e), Ann Arbor, Michigan.

2003. “Copula variability in Gullah and AAVE.” Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Atlanta Georgia.

2003. “African-American English in the College Curriculum: Ideological and Pedagogical Issues.” LSA, Atlanta, Georgia.

2002. “Gender and communication in work team interactions: Similarities and differences.” Victoria J. Gallagher, Tracey L. Weldon, Cynthia R. Haller, William J. Jordan, and Richard M. Felder. Gender Division of the Southern States Communication Association (SSCA) Convention, Winston-Salem, N.C.

2001. “Negation of the copula in AAVE and Gullah.” Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL), Atlanta, Georgia.

2001. “Negation in Gullah.” New Ways of Analyzing Variation (in English) (NWAV(E)), Raleigh, North Carolina.

2000. “The Gullah copula: A comprehensive analysis.” Gullah: A linguistic legacy of Africans in America—A conference on the 50th anniversary of Africanisms in the Gullah dialect. Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Recent Grants

2004-2006. Research collaborator, “The evaluative component in linguistic change and variation.” National Science Foundation (NSF). #0426061. $274,000. Principal Investigator: Dr. William Labov, (Linguistics) The University of Pennsylvania. Co-research collaborator: Dr. Naomi Nagy, (English) The University of New Hampshire.