Rate My Professor Jennifer Smith

Jennifer Smith is Professor of Sociolinguistics (English Language & Linguistics) in the School of Critical Studies, College of Arts & Humanities, at the University of Glasgow. She earned her MA in Linguistics from Durham University and her PhD from the University of York. Originating from a small fishing town in north-east Scotland, her personal connection to local dialects ignited her interest in linguistic variation. Smith's research centers on sociolinguistics and language variation and change, focusing on dialect morphosyntax, particularly in varieties of Scots. She explores speech patterns across time, space, and social strata, the development of Englishes worldwide, linguistic repertoires of bidialectal speakers, and the incorporation of variation into syntactic theory. A prominent theme is the sociolinguistic development of children, from acquiring caregiver norms to driving peer-oriented change.

Throughout her career, Professor Smith has led several high-profile projects funded by the ESRC, AHRC, and British Academy, such as "One speaker, two dialects: bidialectalism across the generations in a Scottish community" (ESRC, 2013-2016) and "Bidialectalism or dialect death?" (British Academy, 2009-2010). She created landmark digital resources: The Scots Syntax Atlas (AHRC, 2015-2019) and Speak for Yersel: Mapping Scots in the 21st Century Classroom (AHRC, 2021-2022), which democratize access to dialect data across Scotland. Her prolific scholarship includes over 20 peer-reviewed articles in top journals like Language and English Language and Linguistics, such as "Tracking linguistic change in childhood: transmission, incrementation, and vernacular reorganization" (Language, 2022), "English contracted negation revisited: evidence from varieties of Scots" (Language, 2023), and the monograph Sociolinguistic Variation in Children's Language: Acquiring Community Norms (2019). In recognition of her contributions, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2025 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Her work profoundly impacts the field by illuminating social and biological drivers of language change and fostering public engagement with sociolinguistic research.