Namakoli village, Maluku
My research is driven by the interrelated questions: How is language affected by speakers’ communicative and cognitive needs and how are speakers’ social relationships and identities constituted through language use? I have approached these fundamental questions from the perspectives of discourse functional grammar, language variation, change and shift, language learning and language as a vehicle for socially constructing personal and political relationships.
My work has been grounded in a long-term commitment to the study of Indonesia generally, with specific focus moving between the largest regional language, Javanese; the smaller, endangered languages of Maluku; and the national language, Indonesian. In all cases I have been particularly concerned with what the experience of marginalised and rarely studied speech communities and language varieties can contribute to our understanding of language more generally.