M'Balia Thomas

Biography

M'Balia Thomas is a tenured Associate Professor at The University of Arizona. She is a faculty member of the English Applied Linguistics Program (MATESOL) in the Department of English and a Regular Faculty Member of the Interdisciplinary doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching (SLAT). 

M'Balia is a Critical Applied Linguist whose research investigates the linguistic injustices committed against “non-native” and “non-standard” speakers of American English and the everyday creative practices these speakers adopt to resist and address linguistic injustices. Her research draws upon a variety of qualitative research methods, including thematic, discourse, conversation, narrative, rhetorical-stylistics, text world theory, and corpus-based analyses. Through the study of written/spoken language—including the language of fictional learners and teachers—her work demonstrates that it is possible to gain insight into learning, teaching, and assessment and the ideologies that shape and impede each.

Degrees

• Ph.D. Second Language Acquisition & Teaching
• University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States
• Girl Talk: A Dialogic Approach to Oral Narrative Storytelling Analysis in English as a Foreign Language Research
• M.A. Advertising
• Universidad Pontificia Comillas de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
• Advertising Strategy for the Launch of Snapple Beverage Drinks in Spain (Written in Spanish)
• B.A. Sociology
• Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States
• Decision Making in International Advertising