Before joining the faculty of Penn GSE as a Lecturer in 2011, Robert Moore held faculty appointments in departments of Anthropology (National University of Ireland, NYU, Reed College) and Linguistics (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northern Illinois University, Reed College). He has also held research positions at Dublin City University (2007-2008) and the University of Chicago (2002-2003).

Research Interests and Current Projects

Robert Moore’s linguistic and ethnographic research has included a long-term study of language obsolescence and heritage language maintenance in the Warm Springs Reservation community (Oregon, USA) and studies of the sociolinguistics of contemporary Ireland with special attention to the politics of accent in Irish English. In addition to studies based on these two ongoing ethnographic projects, his publications include a series of critical interventions into the public and scholarly discourse of language endangerment, studies of the politics and policy of multilingualism in contemporary Europe and the US, of the culture history of American Indians in the Pacific Northwest, and of the semiotics of brands and branding.

Publications

Selected Publications

Moore, R. (2013). Reinventing ethnopoetics. Journal of Folklore Research, 50(1-3): 13–39.

Moore, R., Madsen, L., & Blommaert, J. (2013). 'Taking up speech' in an endangered language: Bilingual discourse in a heritage language classroom. UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum Seminar Discussion and Comments (edited by Jef Van der Aa). Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, Paper 69.

Moore, R. (2012). 'Taking up speech' in an endangered language: Bilingual discourse in a heritage language classroom. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 27(2): 57–78.

Moore, R. (2011). Overhearing Ireland: Mediatized personae in Irish accent culture. Language & Communication 31(3): 229–242.

Moore, R. (2011). “If I actually talked like that, I’d pull a gun on myself”: Accent, avoidance, and moral panic in contemporary Irish English. Anthropological Quarterly, 84(1): 41–64.

Moore, R. (2011, June). Ben Zimmer “On Language” in the New York Times Magazine and the new public linguistics. American Anthropologist, 113(1): 340–344.

Moore, R. (2011). Standardisation, diversity and enlightenment in the contemporary crisis of EU language policy. King’s College London Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies 74.

Moore, R., Pietikainen, S., & Bloommaert, J. 2010. Counting the losses: Numbers as the language of language endangerment. Studies in Sociolinguistics, 4(1): 1–26.

Moore, R. (2009). From performance to print, and back: Ethnopoetics as social practice in Alice Florendo’s corrigenda to “Raccoon and his Grandmother.” Text & Talk, 29(3): 295–324.

Moore, R. (2008). The Warm Springs Project: Reed anthropology in the postwar moment. Reed Magazine 87(1): 12–17.

Moore, R. (2007). From endangered to dangerous: Two types of sociolinguistic inequality (with examples from Ireland & the US). King’s College London Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 45.

Moore, R. (2007). Images of Irish English in the formation of Irish publics, 1600-present. Irish Journal of Anthropology, 10(1): 18–29.

Moore, R. (2006). Disappearing, Inc.: ways of writing in the politics of access to “endangered languages”. Language & Communication, 26: 296–315.

Moore, R (2006). Ceremonialism, self-consciousness, and the problem of the present in North American Indian Studies. In S. Kan and P.T. Strong (eds.), New perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, histories and representations, pp. 185–208. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Moore, R. (2003). From genericide to viral marketing: on ‘brand.’ Language & Communication, 23: 331–357.

Moore, R. (2001). “Indian dandies.” Sartorial finesse and self-presentation along the Columbia River, 1790–1855. In S. Fillin-Yeh (ed.), Dandies: Fashion and finesse in art and culture, pp. 59–100. New York: New York University Press.

Moore, R. (1999). Endangered. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9(1-2): 65–68.

Moore, R. (1993). Performance form and the voices of characters in five versions of the Wasco Coyote Cycle. In J. A. Lucy (ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics, pp. 213–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moore, R. (1988). Lexicalization vs. lexical loss in Wasco-Wishram language obsolescence. International Journal of American Linguistics, 54(4): 453–468.