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  Below is an html version of my CV (last updated on September 10 2010).
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Christopher Michael Taylor

Postal Address:
  Department of Linguistics, MS-23
  Rice University
  PO Box 1892
  Houston, TX 77251-1892

Email:
  sastre [a t] rice {DOT} edu
Education:
  • PhD (in progress), Rice University, Department of Linguistics. Dissertation Title:
    Power to Represent: The Spatial Politics of Style in Houston Hip Hop

    •   Committee:
    • Nancy Niedzielski (Chair)
    • Stephen Tyler
    • Elizabeth Long
    • Norma Mendoza-Denton (University of Arizona)

  • MA (2007), Rice University, Department of Linguistics
    • 1st Qualifying Paper: "The perfect converb? Semantically-related functions of the Sinhala conjunctive participle"
    • 2nd Qualifying Paper: "A kind of constructional grammaticalization chain: The kind of hedge in diachrony"

  • LSA Summer Institute (2005), MIT / Harvard University
  • BA (2002), Sam Houston State University, cum laude, Department of English and Foreign Languages, in English and Spanish
  • BS (2001), Sam Houston State University, Department of Computer Science
Publications:
  • "Hip Hop Parody as Veiled Critique." To be published in African American Language, Pop Culture, and Education. (For publication in 2011)
  • (to appear) "The perfect converb? Semantically-related functions of the Sinhala conjunctive participle." To be published in the proceedings of the thirty-second meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
  • 2007 "The X to where Y construction." Proceedings of the thirty-first meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
  • 2006 "Perfect, sequence, recapitualition: Common construal and the Sinhala conjunctive participle." Santa Barbara Working Papers in Linguistics Vol. 17: Proceedings from the Workshop on Sinhala Linguistics.
Conference Presentations:
  • 2010 "'We fashionable thugs, what you boys talkin' 'bout?' Hip Hop Parody as Veiled Critique." African American Language and Pop Culture 2, November 2-3.
  • 2008 "Conventionalization, place, and collective identification in Houston Hip Hop." New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 37, Nov. 6-9.
  • 2008 "Spatialized authenticity in Hip Hop discourse." The sixteenth annual Symposium About Language and Society - Austin (SALSA), April 11-13.
  • 2006 "It's Just a Flow of Its Own: Hip Hop Styles, Ideology, and Intergroup Distinction." New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 35, Nov. 9-12.
  • 2006 "Hyperbolic Scale Expansion: Scalar Manipulation in the X makes Y look like Z Construction" (with Chris Koops). Conceptual Structure in Discourse and Language (CSDL) 8, November 3-5.
  • 2006 "The perfect converb? Semantically-Related Functions of the Sinhala Conjunctive Participle." Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 32, February 10-12.
  • 2005 "It's gotten to where we can talk about it: to where and the constructional-pragmatic scale." Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 31, February 18-20.
  • 2004 "/aw/ Variation in the Hip Hop marketplace: Local identities and social distance." New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 33, Sept. 30-Oct. 3.
Colloquia and Workshop Presentations:
  • 2008 "Political and Symbolic Economies of Hip Hop Subcultures." Rice University, Department of Linguistics colloquium series, April 12.
  • 2005 "Perfect, sequence, recapitulation: Common construal and the Sinhala conjunctive participle." Invited for presentation at the Rice-UCSB Workshop on Sinhala Linguistics, June 3-4.
  • 2004 "Emergent subordination: The grammaticalization of to where." Invited for presentation at the first Rice-UT Workshop on Language in Use, Oct. 24-25.
Grants and Fellowships:
  • 2004-2008 Summer research grant from the Dolores Mitchell Trust
  • 2003-2008 Linguistics Departmental Fellowship, Rice University
Academic Experience:

Rice University
  • 2007 (Fall) Instructor, Language and Society (Ling / SWGS 205)
  • 2007 (Summer) Grader, freshman composition examination
  • 2006 (Fall) Teaching assistant, Language and Society (Ling / SWGS 205, Dr. Nancy Niedzielski); duties included giving a guest lecture on linguistic ethnography
  • 2006 (Summer) Grader, freshman composition examination
  • 2005 (Spring) Teaching assistant, Introduction to Phonology (Ling 311, Dr. Katherine Crosswhite); duties included giving a guest lecture on Metrical Stress Theory
  • 2003 (Fall) Teaching assistant, Introduction to the Scientific Study of Language (Ling 200, Dr. Robert Englebretson)
Academic Service:
  • 2007-2008 Planning Committee, NWAV 37 (Rice University)
  • Fall 2008 Organizer, "The Social Meaning of Linguistic Variation: Structure and Process," panel at NWAV 37 (Rice University). Panelists included Kathryin Campbell-Kibler, Elaine Chun, Penelope Eckert, Rob Podesva, Robin Queen, Qing Zhang, and I.
  • Spring 2007 Organizer of "Structuring Language: Cultural, Cognitive, and Theoretical Perspectives" (sponsored by the Rice Linguistics Society)
  • 2006-2007 President, Rice Linguistics Society
  • Spring 2006 Co-organizer of poster session at the 11th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language
  • 2005-2006 Vice-President and co-founder, Rice Linguistics Society
  • 2004-2005 Department Webmaster, Department of Linguistics, Rice University
  • 2004-2005 Social Chair, Department of Linguistics, Rice University
  • Spring 2003 Organizer of the Catch-22 Liberal Arts Festival, Sam Houston State University
Research Interests:
    Language ideology, style, discourse, place and authenticity, performance, ethnography, genre & generic norms, the language of (Houston) Hip Hop, sociophonetics
Professional Memberships:
  • Linguistic Society of America
  • American Anthropological Association
  • American Dialect Society
Languages:
  • Spanish: Some speaking, reading knowledge
  • French: Reading knowledge
  • Latin: Knowledge of structure
  • Sinhala: Knowledge of structure and vocabulary (through one-year field methods course)