Edward Finegan
Professor of linguistics and law, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Contact at: (213) 740-3876, (310) 204-1501 or finegan@usc.edu
Expertise:
- language in social relationships -- the role of class, ethnicity, gender and culture
- creation and maintenance of social structures and hierarchies through discourse (language usage) practices
- how language features and discourse practices among social groups affect socioeconomic status and educational achievement - effects of class, ethnicity and gender
- social structure and cultural values as reflected in discourse and institutional practices
- relationships between educational achievement and the language of one's social identity
- men and women - challenges of different conversational styles
- language policy in the U.S.
- multilingualism - its history and its educational, political and social pros and cons
- English-only movement - its history and its pros and cons
- language usage in institutional settings
- language usage in the legal profession
- forensic linguistics
- modern English usage
- "correct" grammar
- sociolinguistics
- linguistics
- stylistics
- dialects
- Author of Language: Its Structure and Use, 3rd ed. (1998) and Attitudes toward English Usage (1980)
- Co-author of Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999)
- Co-editor of Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register (1993)
USC Information