She received her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Her primary research areas are in linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and Asian American studies. Examining the language practices of Asian Americans and other racial minorities, her current research is interested in the ways in which links between dialects and ethnic groups become established, appropriated, and disrupted in discursive interaction. Her work has won numerous awards and has appeared in several academic journals, including "Journal of Sociolinguistics," "Discourse Studies," and a "Special Issue of Pragmatics" on the discourse practices of Asian Pacific Americans, which she also co-edited. See less