Aiden VanderStouwe

Dr. Aiden VanderStouwe joined the Linguistics program in 2016. He holds an MA and Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Santa Barbara focusing on sociocultural linguistics and language, interaction, and social organization. As a sociocultural linguist and linguistic anthropologist, his research lies at the intersections of language and identity, gender, and sexuality, with expertise in queer studies, critical discourse analysis, ethnographic methods, intersectional analysis, and language and interaction. His current work involves a long-term ethnographic study of the local drag community, exploring identity construction, language use, and performativity. Recent projects have also included investigating agency and linguistic negotiations of identity among straight-identified men interested in men, ethnographic work surrounding safe space construction in LGBTQ communities, and interactional explorations of participation frameworks in casual settings. He has also written about language in the same-sex marriage movement originating from activist work during the time of California’s Proposition 8, which removed the right of same-sex couples to marry in the late 2000s. Aiden’s work frequently aims to link academia to the everyday world, especially as it relates to issues of grassroots activism, public policy, and social justice.

Sociocultural linguistics; language, gender, and sexuality; language and identity; language and politics; language in interaction; linguistic activism