Who We Are: Penelope Eckert

Ph.D., Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University

Penny EckertPenelope Eckert received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1978 and is Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. Her earliest work was on phonological variation and change in a dialect of Gascon, based on fieldwork in a village in the Pyrenees (see, e.g. Eckert 1980. “The structure of a long-term phonological process: The back vowel chain shift in Soulatan Gascon,” in William Labov ed., Locating Language in Time and Space. New York, Academic Press). Her focus then moved to the social motivations for the adoption of sound changes, and more generally to meaning in variation. Since adolescents and preadolescents have been found to lead in sound change, she has been studying the English of those age groups in the US , locating the quantitative study of phonological variation in social analyses based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork. This work is best represented in her ethnography of a midwestern high school, Jocks and Burnouts (Teachers College Press 1989), and the account of the relation between sociolinguistic variation and participation in the high school social order, in Linguistic Variation as Social Practice (Blackwell 2000). In recent years, she has concentrated a good deal on the role of gender in variation, and has co-authored, with Sally McConnell-Ginet, Language and Gender (Cambridge University Press 2003).

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Our Founder

Board of Trustees

  • William Wulf, Ph.D., Former President, National Academy of Engineering, Board Chair
  • Bill Unger, Partner Emeritus, Mayfield Fund - Vice-Chair
  • Margaret Ashida, Director, Diversity and Workforce Programs - IBM Software Group
  • James Beck, CPA & CMA, Managing Director & CFO, Mayfield Fund - Treasurer & Vice President
  • Francine Berman, Professor, Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, UC San Diego and Fellow, ACM
  • Debi Coleman, Managing Partner, SmartForest Ventures
  • Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Research and Systems Engineering, Google
  • Penny Herscher, President & CEO, firstRain
  • Kathy Hill, Senior VP Ethernet and Wireless Systems Technology Group, Cisco Systems Inc.
  • Wayne Johnson, Vice President, University Relations, Hewlett-Packard
  • Maria Klawe, President, Harvey Mudd College
  • Richard Rashid, Senior VP and VP Research, Microsoft
  • Justin Rattner, Senior Fellow & CTO, Intel
  • Cheryl Shavers, Former Undersecretary of Technology, Clinton Administration, & CEO of Global Smarts, Inc.
  • Telle Whitney, President & CEO, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
  • Linda Bernardi, Emeritus (Term: 1996 -2006)
  • Greg Papadopoulos, Emeritus (Term: 1996 -2006)

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Board of Advisors