Susan Meredith Burt is a professor in the Department of English at Illinois State University. She earned her Ph.D.in Linguistics from the University of Illinois.
2010 0-7734-1294-8 This work demonstrates the change in how speakers use language to request, thank, and perform other interpersonal verbal tasks in Hmong, an immigrant language now spoken in Wisconsin, Minnesota and California, as well as in its native Laos. Since the changes that have taken place in Hmong follow directly from the language's extended contact with American English, this book illustrates the localized, specific, pragmatic effects of language globalization on a small, displaced language community.