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Professor Jennifer Smith FBA

Social and biological influences on language variation and change. How children acquire variation in the early years of language development and later drive linguistic change. The sociolinguistics of Scots.
Headshot of Professor Jennifer Smith FBA
Fellow type
UK Fellow
Year elected
2025
Honours
FBA
Sections
Linguistics and Philology
Website
https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/staff/jennifersmith/

Summary

Jennifer Smith hails from a small fishing town in north-east Scotland and the dialect she spoke there sparked her lifelong interest in linguistic study.

Her research investigates speech patterns across time, space and the social system, uncovering the mechanisms which drive language variation and change.

She has worked on the origins and development of Englishes worldwide, the linguistic repertoires of multilectal speakers, and how variation can be accounted for within formal theories of language structure.

Her key area of research is in tracking the sociolinguistic development of children as they move from imitators in the caregiver-dominated norms of the home to innovators in the peer-dominated norms of the playground.

She has directed a number of ESRC, AHRC and British Academy funded projects, including the creation of two digital resources which map dialect patterns across Scotland - The Scots Syntax Atlas and Speak for Yersel - bringing sociolinguistic research into the public sphere.

Jennifer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Current post

University of Glasgow Professor of Sociolinguistics

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