Research Interests
My research explores how language
plays an integral part in the processes of constructing individual and group
identities. Currently, I am investigating the multiple meanings of weather
and climate forecasts in different sociocultural contexts in rural
communities of Northeast Brazil.
Predictions are communicated and interpreted in particular ways that both
reflect and challenge ideas about who is an expert, whose predictions are
authentically traditional, and who is a “liar”. I integrate theoretical
dimensions of linguistic and cultural anthropology in analyses of how
weather-related communicative practices are tied to particular historical,
social, environmental and epistemological contexts. An ethnographic and
discourse-based perspective highlights communication issues emerging in
these domains where science, local knowledge, culture and subjective
experience intersect. In
addition to discourse analysis of weather predictions, talk about
agriculture and verbal expressions of traditional knowledge, my other
research areas include communication between science and the public,
cultural aspects of natural resource management, and vulnerability of rural
and Arctic populations to weather-related hazards. As an active member of
Weather and Society Integrated Studies
(WAS*IS),
an interdisciplinary applied research group, I am working to improve the
integration of social and natural sciences to benefit users of weather
information in both the public and private sectors.
The newest direction
for my work on language and identity is in onomastics, the study of proper
names. I am interested in the experiences newcomers to Canada have when their names do not
fit into the legal, institutional and conventional frameworks for the
composition, spelling and pronunciation of personal names. I am developing a
new research program that will analyze stories about these experiences and
the influence names have on the way individuals see themselves and others.
See [here] for a possible opportunity to work as a graduate research
assistant on this project.
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