James Stratton to join the faculty in Fall 2024 as an Assistant Professor of German and Linguistics

James is a Germanic linguist, specializing in variationist sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and second language acquisition. One of his current research projects focuses on intensification in Germanic languages (modern and historical), a project which involves an examination of how intensifying adverbs develop over time and how linguistic and social factors influence their use. A second major project aims to extend the use of variationist methods to the study of underrepresented speech communities and languages. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Purdue University in 2022 and will be coming to Penn State from the University of British Columbia where he served as an Assistant Professor in the department of English Language and Literatures. He has a forthcoming book, Expanding variationist sociolinguistic research in varieties of German, and looks forward to opening a sociolinguistic research lab at Penn State.