Sali A. Tagliamonte

Sali A. Tagliamonte is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, Canada, and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York (UK). Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, language variation, and change, with a particular emphasis on Canadian English dialects. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Language Variation and Change and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC).

Education: PhD, MA (University of Ottawa); BA (Hons) (York University). Her work examines dialectal patterns across urban and rural Ontario, including projects like the Ontario Dialects Project and the Toronto English Archive. She investigates language change in later life, collaborating with psychologists to study socio-cognitive adjustments in aging populations.

Teaching includes courses on sociolinguistics, urban dialectology, and language variation. Her sociolinguistics lab conducts fieldwork in communities like Temiskaming Shores, Kapuskasing, and Almonte, documenting vernacular speech. Key publications include Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents and Making Waves: The Story of Variationist Sociolinguistics.

Research highlights include studies on quotatives (e.g., be like), intensifiers (really vs. very), and tags (eh, right). Her work bridges quantitative and qualitative methods, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to language dynamics.