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. & 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.
Salmons, Joseph & Joshua R. Brown. Verticalization and historical sociolinguistics of language maintenace in medieval English. In Handbook of historical sociolinguistics.
Brown, Joshua R. Diachronic multilingualism in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Brown, Joshua R. Forensic multilingualism in 19th century Pennsylvania.
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Brown, Joshua R. The language ecology of Pennsylvania Dutch material culture. Haugen re-visited: Theoretical and empirical realities of heritage communities. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Brown, Joshua R. Pennsylvania Dutch cemeteries as multilingual landscapes.
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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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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”