Βι¶ΉΣ³»­

Valerie Fridland, Ph.D.

Professor
Frandsen Humanities

Summary

Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics at Βι¶ΉΣ³»­ and the author of Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good and Bad English. She also writes a monthly blog for Psychology Today, is a regular guest writer for the popular Grammar Girl podcast and has a lecture series, Language and Society, available with The Great Courses. Her work has appeared in media outlets ranging from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to Armchair Expert, Entrepreneur, and NPR. Her new book, Why We Talk Funny, comes out in spring 2026, and explores the fascinating science and history behind the accents that define us.

Research interests

  • American dialectology and regional vowel variation
  • How gender and ethnicity are enmeshed with linguistic variation

Courses taught

  • ENGL 412A/612A - Linguistics
  • ENGL 413A/613A - Sociolinguistics
  • ENGL 411B/611B - Principles of Modern Grammar
  • 416A/616A Language and Gender

Publications

  • Fridland, Valerie and Tyler Kendall. 2016. English in the Western States. In Raymond Hickley (ed.), Listening to the Past. Cambridge University Press.
  • Kendall, Tyler and Valerie Fridland. 2015. Mapping the perception of linguistic form: Dialectometry with perception data. In John Nerbonne, Marie-Hélène Côté and Remco Knooihuizen (eds.), The Future of Dialects. Berlin: Language Science Press.
  • Fridland, Valerie and Tyler Kendall. 2014. Durational and spectral differences in American English vowels: dialect variation within and across regions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 136.1: 341-349.
  • Fridland, V. M., Kendall, T., Farrington, C. 2013. The role of duration in regional U.S. vowel shifts. Proceedings on Meetings on Acoustics (POMA).
  • Fridland, V. M. 2012. Rebel vowels: Southern vowel shift and the N/S speech divide. Language and Linguistic Compass.
  • Fridland, V. M., Kendall, T. 2012. The effect of regional vowel differences on vowel perception and production: Evidence from U.S. vowel shifts. Lingua.
  • Kendall, T., Fridland, V. M. 2012. Variation in the production and perception of mid front vowels in the U.S. Southern Vowel Shift. Journal of Phonetics.

Education

  • Ph.D., Sociolinguistics, Michigan State University, 1998
  • B.S., Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University, 1990