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Education
1990: B.A. Linguistics, University of Oregon
1997: M.A. TESL, University of California, Los Angeles
2003: Ph.D. Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles
Areas of Expertise
Language socialization
Educational linguistics
Linguistic anthropology of education
Sociolinguistics
Professional Biography
Dr. Howard began her career teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language in Japan, Thailand, and the United States to various populations, including private language school students in Japan, public grade-school students in Thailand, and adult immigrants in the U.S. During her graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught academic English to university students, trained ESL teachers at California State University, and provided in-service training for English teachers in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Dr. Howard has lived, worked, and conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at various times since 1997. Her dissertation research examined Northern Thai children’s language socialization in the local vernacular (Kam Muang) and the official national language of instruction (Standard Thai) at home, at school, and in play groups in a village outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Both language varieties mediate social relationships through complex means of constructing, displaying, and negotiating respect and intimacy. School-age children’s participation in these social practices of respect and intimacy in turn socializes them into local ideologies of hierarchy, social control, and responsibility. By examining children’s interactions in both asymmetrical (with parents and teachers) and complex peer relationships, this research illuminates the role of youth in their own socialization, as well as their role in transforming the language practices of their community.
Dr. Howard came to GSE in 2003 after receiving her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at UCLA. Her courses address topics such as educational linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language socialization, teaching writing to ESL students, and microethnography.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Howard is interested in language socialization across the life course. In particular, her research explores processes of language socialization in linguistically diverse communities, including children’s socialization into the language practices and language ideologies of their community in formal (e.g., classroom) and informal (e.g., home or play group) settings. She is currently conducting an ethnographic research project in a privileged urban school in Chiang Mai Thailand, examining how the local vernacular and the national standard language mediate the social practices of respect and intimacy in a kindergarten and a second-grade classroom. In particular, she hopes to examine variation in the processes of language socialization in the urban versus the peri-urban setting in which her dissertation research was conducted. The language varieties in these two settings, including the children’s vernacular, are positioned and treated differently. In the village school, there are vast vernacular spaces in which the children’s vernacular is used as a means of communication, despite official policies mandating Standard Thai as the language of school interaction. In the village school, the vernacular is organically infused into classroom interactions, invoked as a fund of knowledge, as a means of constructing intimacy between the teacher and student, and as a means of peer interaction. In the urban school, on the other hand, the vernacular is taught to older students once a week as a subject in school (much as a heritage language would be taught), but it is absent in classroom interactions. This treatment of the vernacular positions it as a language to be examined as a historical object rather than used in everyday life and distances children from their own heritage. Dr. Howard hopes to continue to examine how conceptions of politeness, respect, and intimacy mediate language practices both in and out of the classroom in these and other communities.
Research interests include the anthropology of childhood, transnational childhood, language socialization in peer groups, language socialization of linguistically diverse children at school, heritage language socialization across the life span, and language socialization into academic literacies.
Courses Taught
EDUC 516: Teaching Writing to English as a Second Language Students
EDUC 537: Educational Linguistics
EDUC 546: Sociolinguistics in Education in the U.S.
EDUC 845: Doctoral Seminar in Microethnography
Selected Publications
Howard, K. (forthcoming). Kinterm usage and hierarchy in Thai children’s peer groups. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
Howard, K. (forthcoming). Language socialization and language shift among school-aged children. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Second Revised Edition. Volume 8: Language Socialization. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Howard, K. & Lo, A. (Eds.) (forthcoming). Special issue: Respect in the Classroom. Linguistics and Education.
Howard K. (2004). Socializing respect at school in Northern Thailand. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 20 (1), 1-30.
Howard, K. (2000). The notion of current relevance in the Thai perfect. Linguistics, 38(2), 373-407.
Benfield, J., & Howard, K. (2000). English as the language of science. European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, 18, 642-648.
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