Stephen D. Looney

Stephen D. Looney is a Teaching Professor in Applied Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University and Director of the ITA Program. His research focuses on classroom interaction and second language assessment through conversation analysis.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Georgia
• M.A. in TESOL from Carson-Newman University

Dr. Looney specializes in multimodal classroom discourse as morally ordered social practice, examining how teachers and students navigate epistemics, deontics, and emotion in situ. His work includes mixed-methods research on L2 interactional competence assessment to inform test rating criteria. He teaches courses in classroom discourse analysis, conversation analysis, pronunciation pedagogy, and second language acquisition.

His recent publications demonstrate consistent focus on conversation analysis in educational settings, particularly exploring multimodal resources like laughter, teasing, and embodiment in managing classroom interactions. Key trends include third-turn repetitions in foreign language classrooms, translingual practices in workplace contexts, and Rasch modeling for assessment validity.