Introduction

[Maggie Ronkin]

Introduction: Maggie Ronkin

I am a PhD Candidate and Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at
Georgetown University in Washington, DC. I specialize in sociolinguistics
and the overlapping fields of pragmatics, discourse analysis, and linguistic
anthropology. In 1997-99, I conducted research and gave talks on ideologies
of "language" and "race" in the wake of the Ebonics controversy in the USA.
Helen E. Karn and I co-authored a paper on the racialized mocking of Ebonics
on the Internet that appeared in the _Journal
of Sociolinguistics_ and earned me honorary membership in the American
Dialect Society. My dissertation research (in progress) draws from
autobiographical narratives to examine linguistic resources that women in
non-elite Pakistani families use to construct and project their identities.
Prominent among these resources thus far is dialog, with which speakers
create and manipulate voices to position themselves in relation to others
and to concepts of agency and authority. Bridging my research areas are my
interests in uses of language to constitute identities and situated
linguistic studies to address issues of representation in the social
sciences. In 1999-2000, I studied Urdu intensively under the auspices of the
University of California and was an American Institute of Pakistan Studies
Fellow.

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Urdu-language writer Asher Mahmood is working with me this year. Asher has
published short stories and poems and is founder and editor of the
independent _Literary News_ in Lahore. In fall 1999, Fulbright Fellow
Cabeiri Robinson and Asher released his first collection of poetry, _MiTTi
ka Khuda_, as a mehfil e-nazm on audiocassette introduced by Pakistan Pride
of Performance recipient Hasan Rizvi. The cassette has been featured on
public radio programs and will be reviewed in the forthcoming edition of the
_Annual of Urdu Studies_. Asher plans to start his PhD studies in Urdu
literature in fall 2001.
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