Norma Mendoza-Denton
Norma Catalina Mendoza-Denton is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, formerly of the University of Arizona. She specializes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, including work in sociophonetics, language and identity, ethnography and visual anthropology. Biography. Mendoza-Denton earned a doctorate in linguistics from Stanford University in 1997 with the completion of her dissertation, "Chicana/Mexicana Identity and Linguistic Variation: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of Gang Affiliation in an Urban High School". She worked previously as an assistant professor at Ohio State University. Mendoza-Denton has served as president of the  Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association, since 2011. Her ethnographic and sociolinguistic analyses of Latina gang members in California are presented in her book "Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice Among Latina Youth Gangs". Mendoza-Denton was a consultant for the "Do You Speak American?" television program. In 2011 she received a National Institute for Civil Discourse grant for her work analyzing the ways in which politicians handle disagreements with their constituents. In 2020, she published a collection of essays, co-edited with linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh, examining the politics of language during the Trump presidency