Mo Gordon is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Linguistics.

More information about Mo Gordon

Fields of Interest

• History of English
• English historical sociolinguistics
• Early-and Late Modern English
• Language- and dialect contact
• Dialect formation
• Language variation and change
• Language attitudes

Research

My research interests lie within the field of historical sociolinguistics. I’m particularly interested in how and why supra-local (written) varieties emerged in Early/Late Modern English urban settings and have carried out studies with regard to the supralocalisation of morpho-syntactical and orthographic features. In addition, my aim is to investigate the Anglicization of Scots across various social layers of Scotland in the Late Modern English period. As part of this I look at how pre-and proscriptive notions interact with language usage in correspondence.

CV

Sept. 2019-present

Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden University, the Netherlands

Sept. 2018-Sept. 2020

Lecturer in English language, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics (UiL OTS), Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Sept. 2017-Sept. 2018

Lecturer in English Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, the Netherlands

Feb. 2017-July 2017

Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland

2013-2017; PhD Emerging Standards

Urbanisation and the Development of Standard English, c.1400-1700 at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics (UiL OTS), Utrecht University.

Thesis: The Urban Vernacular of Late Medieval and Renaissance Bristol (Supervisors: Prof. Peter Schrijver and Prof. Anita Auer)

2011-2012

M.A. Language, Mind and Society, Utrecht University

Thesis: “Making the Best Use of Bad Data”- Phonological Variation and Historical Sociolinguistics (Supervisors: Prof. Anita Auer & Dr. Hans van de Velde) Specialism: (Socio)linguistics, Language Policy, Corpus linguistics (internship)

2008-2011

B.A. English Language and Culture, Utrecht University

Thesis: Robert Burns as a Naive Genius: The Choices of an Eighteenth-Century Scots Writer in a Standard English World (Supervisor: Prof. Anita Auer) Specialism: Old and Middle English, Historical linguistics, Dialectology, history of English, language contact, translation studies