Maike Rocker

Maike Rocker is an Assistant Professor of German and Applied Linguistics at Texas Tech University's Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures department. She holds a PhD in German and Language Science from Pennsylvania State University (2022), an M.Ed. from Universität Bremen (2016), and a B.A. from the same institution (2013).

Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, morphosyntax, and language contact varieties. She examines German-speaking communities in the Americas, including East Frisian immigrants in Iowa, Jewish German communities in the Dominican Republic, and Low German dialects in the U.S. Her work explores language shift, vitality, and maintenance through historical and ethnographic approaches.

Rocker teaches undergraduate German courses and graduate-level linguistics for language educators. Her recent publications analyze Pennsylvania Dutch syntax, Sosúa German vitality, and multilingual texts from 19th-century German-American newspapers.

Her research emphasizes understudied German diaspora communities, combining corpus linguistics with ethnographic fieldwork. She has contributed to projects on language policy, heritage language retention, and the intersection of language and identity in postvernacular societies.

Contact: CMLL Building 216 | mrocker@ttu.edu | 806.742.3145