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​My research examines how languages, dialects, and accents vary, and what that can tell us about the social systems we live in, individual psychology, even history. This includes the study of sociolinguistics, style variation, migration, bilingualism, new varieties of English, phonetics, syntax, and typology.

Dialect and speech style   My current ESRC project Generations of London English looks at real-time change in the English of Londoners, across generations and individual lifespans, from young children to older adults. In much of my work I investigate why individuals develop and use a particular range of speaking styles, particularly in situations of social contact, bilingualism, and migration. I suggest that an examination of accent repertoires and style-shifting can elucidate not just questions of social identity, but also individual cognition and societal structure.

Accent bias   Our ESRC project Accent Bias in Britain (Erez Levon, PI) examined multiple dimensions of attitudes to accents in the UK today. This includes new nationwide surveys of attitudes to accent labels and to audio stimuli of job interviews, a study of whether unconscious accent bias interferes with recruiters' ability to discern competence in the elite profession of law, and attitudes in real-time. In other work, I examine shifting prestige of global varieties of English.

Diaspora   My ESRC project Dialect Development and Style in a Diasporic Community examined dialect variation and social change in an urban dialect contact situation. This ranged from macro-social change across generations and gender, to micro-interactional dynamics in the use and transmission of accent features. I was also co-investigator on a project on cultural variation in thinking styles, in particular across generations of British Bangladeshi and white British populations in East London (Why do people from different cultures think differently?, Alex Mesoudi PI).

World Englishes   I am also interested in linguistic, cognitive, and social factors in how global Englishes vary and change, with a focus on syntactic variation in bilingual speech and cross-dialectal comparisons. This has included comparisons of the outcomes of language contact in Singapore English, Indian English, African American English, L2 Englishes, and creole languages.

Syntactic variation and computational linguistics   This interest in variation extends to formal models of grammatical typology and variation in English dialects, bilingual grammars, and case and agreement in Indo-Aryan languages. It also includes collaborative work with computational linguists at Google Research on improving NLP for dialect variation in under-resourced language varieties.

Public engagement   I co-developed the Accent Bias Britain online resource, and co-authored a Sutton Trust report on accent and social mobility. I lead the Accent Bias Britain professional training activities. I have also developed an online resource, Teach Real English!, for use by A-Level English Language teachers and students. And I co-founded the public engagement initiative Multilingual Capital.

Recent books and journal issues: