[none]

[Janet.Holmes at vuw.ac.nz]

Here is a short biographical note to introduce myself.


I was born in Liverpool in England and graduated from Leeds University with
an MPhil in Linguistics in 1970.    I hold  a  personal Chair  in
Linguistics  at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where I
teach  linguistics and sociolinguistics courses, specialising in New
Zealand English and language and gender issues.  With my colleagues Allan
Bell (who holds a Senior Research Fellowship here) and Mary Boyce, I
completed a social dialect survey in the Wellington area in 1991. I am
currently Director of a project to collect a one million word Corpus of
Spoken New Zealand English. The material is collected and  transcribed but
not yet edited.    My publications include a textbook, An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics., a book of readings, Sociolinguistics,  co-edited with
John Pride, and the first book of sociolinguistic and pragmatic articles on
New Zealand English, New Zealand Ways of Speaking English, co-edited with
Allan Bell.   I have published on a range of sociolinguistic and pragmatic
topics, including New Zealand English, New Zealand women's usage, sexist
language, pragmatic particles and hedges, compliments and apologies. My
most recent book Women, Men and Politeness was published by Longman this
year.


I am currently working in a number of areas  - one has to as one of a very
few sociolinguists in a place like NZ - including research on women's use
of narrative and humour, a project (with Nik and Justine Coupland at
University of Wales) on language and environmental issues - we are looking
at tanning and changed attitudes and discourse on tanning, and I am
planning a project on language in the workplace.

Look forward to contact via CTITICS

Janet Holmes

Hei konei raa
janet.holmes at vuw.ac.nz
Janet Holmes
Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Victoria University of
Wellington, PO Box 600. Wellington, New Zealand.
Tel: (64) (4) 472-1000 X 8796 or (64) (4) 495-5279
Fax: (64) (4) 499-4601
Email: janet.holmes at vuw.ac.nz