"I love exploring with my students the endless varieties of written and spoken language—casual vs. formal, regional variations, style differences, pronunciation changes, slang, etc. Language gives us a fantastic pool of data to play in and learn from."
Susan Garrett
Assistant ProfessorPractice
Susan Garrett is an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Professional and Creative Writing at Goucher College. She completed her Master's degree in linguistics and all Ph.D. coursework in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. From 1999-2003, she taught composition and linguistics at McDaniel College and Goucher College. Since joining Goucher full time in 2003, she has taught all levels of composition courses and all linguistics courses offered through the Writing Program as well as many independent studies and special topics classes on subjects including sociolinguistics, language change, language and humor, grammar and syntax, and the use of the passive in history writing. Her current classes include Analyzing Linguistic Data, the first course at Goucher to fulfil both the writing and Data Analytics—Across the Curriculum graduation requirements. This class teaches students to analyze data from various linguistic sources to learn more about regional dialects, language and gender, language variation, stylistic variation, and more, and culminates in students conducting original research on a linguistics topic of their choice. Susan also serves as faculty advisor for the newly reintroduced Verge, Goucher’s journal of undergraduate nonfiction writing and research, which publishes peer-, faculty-, staff- and alumnae/i-reviewed work by Goucher students.
Publications
Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe VI
“Positional faithfulness and truncation in child speech”
Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society
“Rethinking Spanish Stress”
Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe IV
“Another look at Spanish Stress and Syllable Structure”
Conference Papers & Panel Participation
Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese
“Truncations in Child Speech”
Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference IV
“Spanish Negation from the 12th to 17th Century”
Academic or Professional Associations
American Dialect Society
National Council of Teachers of English
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
Running Verge, Goucher’s Journal of Undergraduate Nonfiction Writing and Research
Reviewing manuscripts for various publishers
Developing Writing Program curriculum
Maintaining CCCW website