I completed my doctorate in Anthropology (and in the Language Behavior Research Laboratory) in 1976 at the University of California, Berkeley, with specialization in the role of language in culture and society, in gender theory, and Eastern Europe. My first large research project resulted in a book, Language Shift (1979), that described the linguistic practices of a minority population in Eastern Europe, the making of ethnicity in the post-World War II period, and the process by which, through a shift in ideas and evaluations of its languages, a bilingual community becomes monolingual in one of its languages. This book has been excerpted extensively. In subsequent research I have taken up comparative questions, focusing on ethnic minorities throughout Europe, and on women's linguistic resources and strategies worldwide. Currently, I am engaged in three related research projects. One examines the political rhetoric and discursive aspects of the East European "transitions" away from state socialism. The public rituals through which the transition was accomplished provide a privileged view of the relationship between language and politics under communism and after.

 A second project is concerned with theorizing the cultural bases of language change. In this project, Judith Irvine and I are exploring the semiotic processes through which linguistic ideologies recognize variation and differentiation in a sociolinguistic field and come to understand, justify, and finally change that variation.

 The third project is more anthropological, but still focuses on discursive matters. It involves the comparative analysis of gender relations and gender discourses as they shape and constrain the political and economic processes of the Eastern European transformations.

 Here are some of the publications that have emerged from these projects:

 1979. Language Shift. Academic Press.

 1995. "The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference." Social Research (with J.T. Irvine)

 1995. "Language and the 'arts of resistance'." Cultural Anthropology.

 1991. "Bartòk's funeral: Representations of Europe in Hungarian politial rhetoric." American Ethnologist.

Politics of Gender After Socialism.  (co-written with Gail Kligman)

Reproducing Gender:  Politics, publics and everyday life. (co-edited with Gail Kligman)

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