Įckert's research shows that adolescents are the 'movers and shakers of linguistic change', which explains her focus on this demographic in much of her research, specifically the creation of adolescence in the United States. Įckert is a professor of linguistics at Stanford University where she is an active affiliate of the feminist, gender and sexuality studies program, and is a member of various committees. Īs president of the organization, Eckert worked to combat workplace harassment and power dynamics in the linguistics community, through a panel entitled 'Our Linguistics Community: Addressing Bias, Power Dynamics, Harassment', as well as developing an open dialogue among the ethics, status of women in linguistics, and ethnic diversity in linguistics committees. In 2016, she was elected president of the LSA. In 2012, she was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, where she had previously served on a number of committees, including the ethics, ethnic diversity in linguistics, nominating, and status of women in linguistics, where she served as committee chair from 1990–1991. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.

Įckert served as the president of the International Gender and Language Association from 2000–2003. She attended Oberlin College in 1963 as an undergraduate.

She is the author or co-author of three books on sociolinguistics, the co-editor of three collections, and author of numerous scholarly papers in the field. Biography Įckert received her PhD in linguistics in 1978 from Columbia University, where she was a student of William Labov. She served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2018.

She specializes in variationist sociolinguistics and is the author of several scholarly works on language and gender. Penelope ' Penny' Eckert (born 1942) is Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Stanford University. JSTOR ( March 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Please help by adding secondary or tertiary sources. This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources.

Language and Gender by Penelope Eckert