Current Research
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Bousquette, Joshua, Joshua R. Brown, Michael T. Putnam & Joseph Salmons. German worldwide: Variation, change, and stability. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Auer, Anita, Joshua R. Brown & Angela Hoffman. Historical sociolinguistic studies of language islands in the Americas: Tracing the development from immigrant languages to postvernacularity. Leiden: Brill.
Brown, Joshua R. Bilingual materialities and language ecology. Haugen re-visited: Theoretical and empirical realities of heritage communities. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Brown, Joshua R. & Angela Hoffman. Durable texts in heritage language communities.
Brown, Joshua R., David Natvig, & Joseph Salmons. Broadening the base of historical sociolinguistics. Special issue of Cadernos de Linguística.
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Salmons, Joseph C. & Joshua R. Brown. Verticalization and the historical sociolinguistics of language maintenance in medieval England. In Bridget Drinka, Terttu Nevalainen, & Gijsbert Rutten (eds.), Handbook of historical sociolinguistics. De Gruyter Mouton.
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Jóhannsdóttir, Kristín & Joshua R. Brown. The Icelanders of Manitoba. In Anita Auer, Joshua R. Brown & Angela Hoffman, In Historical sociolinguistics studies of heritage languages in the Americas. Leiden: Brill.
Hoffman, Angela & Joshua R. Brown. The path of transmission from immigrant Swedish to postvernacularity. In Anita Auer, Joshua R. Brown & Angela Hoffman, In Historical sociolinguistics studies of heritage languages in the Americas. Leiden: Brill.
Brown, Joshua R. & Luca Ciletti. Heritage German across Generations in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In B. Richard Page & Michael T. Putnam, Festschrift. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Brown, Joshua R. & Michael T. Putnam. Language shift, obsolescence, and death. In Edith Aldridge, Anne Breitbarth, Katalin É. Kiss, Adam Ledgeway, Joseph Salmons & Alexandra Simonenko (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to diachronic linguistics. London: Wiley Blackwell
Brown, Joshua R. & Nora Vosburg. Social factors in language shift. In Joshua Bousquette & Simon Pickl, Oxford handbook of the German language. Oxfrord: Oxford University Press.
Research interests
American Studies / Material Culture Studies
Pennsylvania Dutch Studies: Material culture, history
Folk craft: Weaving techniques, gravestones, folk art and craft
Sociolinguistics
Language shift: issues, motivations, and results in heritage language communities
Historical sociolinguistics: heritage language ego-documents, forensic linguistics, language & religion
Heritage languages: permeability of the grammar in language contact, linguistic landscapes
Language pedagogy
Culturally relevant pedagogy: diversity through formal and symbolic curricula, teaching with cultural realia
Proficiency: Acquisition of written and oral proficiency
Faculty-student collaboration
2024: Elva Crist. “An ecolinguistic analysis of toponymy in Iceland and the Northern United States”
2023–2024: Kitty Stewart. “Flower cloth: Language and material culture of Hmong embroidery”
2020–2023: Luca Ciletti and Katie Scherger. “Wisconsin’s heritage language ego-documents”
2020: Kensie Kiesow, Stephanie Puestow, Mary Kate Schneeman, and Nikolaus Spittlemeister, . “Preserving heritage language ego-documents”
2018–2019: Kylie Olson, Benjamin Peterson, and Cassandra Placketka. “Transcultural nursing care and Wisconsin’s Amish communities”
2018: Rachyl Hietpas. “Postvernacular Dutch in Wisconsin”
2018: Jillian Kresen and Hannah Schneeman. “Beyond the tourist’s Berlin”
2017: Tristan Devick and Connor Zielinski. “Inclusive Pedagogy in the German Classroom”
2016: Benjamin Carpenter and Hannah Schneeman. “Gender, class, generation, and politics of memory in Berlin”
2014: Benjamin Carpenter. “Language and identity among Somalis in Barron, Wisconsin”
2013–2015: Lara Steinke. “Writing Proficiency in the Second Language Classroom”
2012: Kelsey Freymiller and Benjamin Gordon. “Teaching culture with soap operas”