Sonja Lanehart
- Professor, Linguistics
- Member of the Graduate Faculty
- Professor, Second Language Acquisition / Teaching - GIDP
- (520) 621-2450
- Communication, Rm. 316B
- Tucson, AZ 85721
- lanehart@arizona.edu
Biography
Sonja Lanehart, Professor of Linguistics and Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona, received her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is a former Ford Foundation Post-doctoral Fellow (Stanford University); Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellow awardee and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow (University of Michigan); Lilly Teaching Fellow (University of Georgia); and a member of Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society and Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society (University of Texas at Austin). She has won grants from the National Science Foundation as well as institutional agencies. She previously taught at the University of Georgia (1995-2006) and the University of Texas at San Antonio (2006-2019). She serves on several national and international professional organization committees, including the Linguistic Society of America, the American Educational Research Association, the American Dialect Society, and the National Council of Teachers of English. She is a past co-editor (with Paul Schutz) of Educational Researcher: Research News and Comment section, the lead journal of the American Educational Research Association. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, her book publications include Sista, Speak! Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and Literacy (U Texas Press, 2002), which received Honorable Mention in the 2003 Myers Outstanding Book Award competition sponsored by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America; Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English (John Benjamins, 2001); African American Women’s Language: Discourse, Education, and Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), and the groundbreaking Oxford Handbook of African American Language (Oxford University Press, 2015). Her forthcoming book on African American Language will be published in the Linguistic Society of America’s collaborative book series with Routledge in 2022.
Degrees
- Ph.D. English Language and Linguistics
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
- Peculiar to Your Mind
- M.A. English Language and Linguistics & Medieval Studies
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
- B.A. English Language and Linguistics
- University of Texas, Austin, Texas, United States
- Whose Right Is the Rule?
Work Experience
- University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona (2019 - Ongoing)
- University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas (2006 - 2019)
- University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia (2002 - 2006)
- University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia (1995 - 2002)
Awards
- Fellow
- Linguistic Society of America, Spring 2021
- President’s Distinguished Diversity Award—Group, Black Faculty and Staff Association
- University of Texas at San Antonio, Spring 2019
- Richard S. Howe Excellence in Service to Undergraduate Students Award
- University of Texas at San Antonio, Spring 2019
Interests
No activities entered.
Courses
2024-25 Courses
-
Language + Social Issues
LING 320 (Spring 2025) -
Intro to Linguistics
LING 201 (Fall 2024) -
Intro to Linguistics
PSY 201 (Fall 2024)
2023-24 Courses
-
Intro to Linguistics
LING 201 (Spring 2024) -
Intro to Linguistics
PSY 201 (Spring 2024) -
Independent Study
LING 699 (Fall 2023) -
Intro to Linguistics
LING 201 (Fall 2023) -
Intro to Linguistics
PSY 201 (Fall 2023) -
Linguistic Theory
LING 697A (Fall 2023)
2022-23 Courses
-
Intro to Linguistics
LING 201 (Spring 2023) -
Intro to Linguistics
PSY 201 (Spring 2023) -
Internship/Hum Lang Tech
LING 593A (Fall 2022) -
Linguistic Theory
LING 697A (Fall 2022)
2021-22 Courses
-
Intro to Linguistics
LING 201 (Spring 2022) -
Intro to Linguistics
PSY 201 (Spring 2022)
2020-21 Courses
-
African American Language
LING 528 (Spring 2021)
2019-20 Courses
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Issues Lang,Rdng+Culture
TLS 595 (Spring 2020) -
Topics Lang,Rdng+Culture
TLS 495 (Spring 2020) -
Varieties Of English
ANTH 383 (Spring 2020)
Scholarly Contributions
Books
- Lanehart, S. (2022). Language in African American Communities. London and New York: Routledge.
- Schutz, P. A., & Lanehart, S. L. (2002). Emotions in Education. doi:10.4324/9781410608628
Chapters
- Lanehart, S. (2020). “’I, Too, Am America’: AAL, #BlackLivesMatter, and Social Justice Activism in Sociolinguistics.”. In The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford(pp 452-460). London and New York: Routledge.
- Lanehart, S. (2019). “Can You Hear (and See) Me Now?: Race-ing American Language Variationist/Change and Sociolinguistic Research Methodologies.”. In Understanding Critical Race Research Methods and Methodologies: Lessons from the Field(pp 34-47). New York and London: Routledge.
- Lanehart, S. (2018). “Re-viewing the Origins and History of African American Language.”. In English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook, 2nd edition(pp 80-95). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Lanehart, S., & Malik, A. (2018). “Black Is, Black Isn’t: Perceptions of Language and Blackness.”. In Language Variety in the New South: Contemporary Perspectives on Change and Variation.(pp 203-222). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
- Lanehart, S. (2017). “Being in the Room.”. In Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy(pp 83-85). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
- Lanehart, S. (2017). “How Is HEL Relevant to Me?”. In Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language: Pedagogy in Practice(pp 41-56). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Journals/Publications
- Lanehart, S. (2021). Among the New Words: Anti-racism and #BlackintheIvory. American Speech, 92(2), 2. doi:10.1215/00031283-9089600
- Lanehart, S. (2021). Say My Name: African American Women's Language. Gender and Language, 15(4), 559-568. doi:https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.21523
- Lanehart, S. (2021). The Struggle is Real Every Single Day. American Speech, 96(2), 286-292. doi:10.1215/00031283-9142460
- Schutz, P. A., & Lanehart, S. L. (1994). Long-term educational goals, subgoals, learning strategies use and the academic performance of college students. Learning and Individual Differences. doi:10.1016/1041-6080(94)90002-7More infoThis study attempted to answer the question: What are the direct and indirect effects of long-term educational goals on educational subgoals, learning strategies use and academic performance? Results from the study showed that long-term educational goals had a direct effect on educational sub- goals and an indirect effect on learning strategies use and academic perfor- mance. In addition, the investigation of individual differences related to learning strategies use indicated that when long-term educational goals are accompanied by the accomplishment of educational subgoals and a sufficient number of use- ful learning strategies, academic performance tended to improve.
Reviews
- Lanehart, S. (2022. Book cover endorsement for My Soul Look Back in Wonder: Memories from a Life of Study, Struggle, and Doin Battle in the Language Wars(pp <1). Back cover.
- Lanehart, S. (2022. Book cover endorsement for Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans, Classic Edition(pp <1). Back cover.
- Lanehart, S. (2022. Endorsement for the book Speaking my Soul: Race, Life, and Language(pp <1).
- Lanehart, S. (2020. Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice. By John Baugh. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press(pp 449-452).More infoLanehart, Sonja. Review. Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice. By John Baugh. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018. vii + 215. Language 96.2 (2020): 449-452.
Others
- Lanehart, S. (2022, January). Foreword to the Routledge Linguistics Classics Edition, African-American English: Structure, History, and Use, Classic Edition. Routledge.More infoI wrote the Foreword for the book.
- Lanehart, S. (2019, February). Preface for American Speech (Special Issue): Exploring African American Language in the Nation’s Capital: Studies with the Corpus of Regional African American Language.. American Speech.
