Education
- Ph. D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- B.A., University of Kentucky
Areas of Interest
Narrative, pragmatics and stance in discourse, more recently incorporating sociohistorical approaches to medical discourse and Alzheimer’s speech, lifespan language, online discourse, and digital corpora of speech
Medical Discourse: Recent Funding
- VA Quality Improvement.2017. Communication in ocular telehealth. Investigator
- MUSC-Internal P20. 2017. Tablet-based program to address pain and fatigue in older adults. Pro bono Consultant
- Duke Endowment: Increasing activity and socialization for older adults. 2017. Co-PI
- SCTR Technology: Telemedicine, talk, and aging in place in low-income housing. 2016-2017. Co-PI
- VA ORH: Training community clergy partners to improve access to care for rural Veterans. 2016-2017. Investigator.
- VA HSRD Merit Award: Story-Call: E-mobile support for VA community dementia caregivers. 2014-2017. Investigator
- HRSA: Multiple approaches to adolescent vaccine decision-making: social media discourse. Supplement to #R40MC21522. 2013-15. Investigator
- VA ONS: Communication intervention development for nurse-to-nurse handoff. 2013-2014. Investigator
- VA Queri Award: Communication Training in Telehealth for Heart Failure Management, 2013-2014. Investigator.
- HRSA: Communication Intervention for Adolescent Immunizations: Cluster Randomized Trial, 2011-2015. Investigator.
- VA Merit Award: Racial Variations in Communication, Decision Making, & Diabetes Outcomes [patient-provider interactions], 2008-11. Investigator.
- VA Queri Award: Telehealth Project: discourse interaction between patients and providers in congestive heart failure. 2009-10. Investigator.
- NIH/NLM: Carolinas Conversations: multiethnic digital corpus of speech by older persons with chronic diseases, and dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. 2007-2010. Co-Principal Investigator.
- Alzheimer’s Association: Cultural competence; culturally sensitive multimedia & materials on communication training. 2005-09. Principal Investigator.
Publications (Books, Articles, & Media) by Category
♦ Medical Discourse: Selected Publications (Medical Discourse Publications) updated in myNCBI linked above: please click settings to arrange newest to oldest
♦ Online Discourse ( Online Discourse Pubs) updated in myNCBI
♦ Sociolinguistics and General Linguistics (Sociolinguistics-General-Linguistics) updated in myNCBI
♦ Selected Recent Presentations since 2010 ( Presentations)
Courses Taught
- Introduction to Language
- Introduction to Linguistics
- Language and Culture
- Language, Health and Aging
- Language, Culture and Society
- History of the Language/World Englishes
- World Literature: Ancient and Medieval
- Chaucer
Awards
- Bonnie E. Cone Professor of Teaching
- Harshini da Silva Mentoring Award
- NCNB/UNC Charlotte Faculty Teaching Award
- Woodrow Wilson Fellow
- National Merit Scholar
Affiliations
- Core Faculty, Interdisciplinary Program in Gerontology
- Affiliate Faculty, Communications Studies
- Adjunct Research Professor, College of Nursing, Medical University of South Carolina
- Affiliate Faculty, Health Services Research
- Affiliate, Health, Equity, and Rural Outreach Innovation Center (HEROIC/COIN), Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, Charleston, SC
- Cercle Ferdinand de Saussure, Geneva
- Research Collaborator, New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behavior