Contact Information
Research Interests
The role of culture in verbal interaction
how speakers perform and infer cultural identities in their own and others' talk
style shifting and code switching in discourse
bilingualism
intercultural communication
sociolinguistics
oral narrative
Research Description
Professor Koven researches the relationships between identity and language practices in migrant communities. She is addresses how bilingual speakers enact multiple, culturally situated identities in talk, with a particular focus on narrative discourse.
Education
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Additional Campus Affiliations
Research Associate, Anthropology
Professor, French and Italian
Professor, Global Studies Programs and Courses
Highlighted Publications
Koven, M. E. J. (2007). Selves in Two Languages: Bilinguals’ verbal enactments of identity in French and Portuguese. (Studies in Bilingualism; Vol. 34). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.34
Recent Publications
Koven, M., & Marques, I. S. (2021). Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog-based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 31(1), 97-118. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12301
Koven, M. (2019). Narrating Desire for Place: Chronotopes of Desire for the Portuguese Homeland Before and After “Return”. In R. Piazza (Ed.), Discourses of Identity in Liminal Places and Spaces (pp. 42-63). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351183383-3
Marques, I. S., & Koven, M. E. J. (2018). (Co)narrações de viagens para Portugal por lusodescendentes no Facebook. Revista da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 134-151. https://doi.org/10.26334/2183-9077/rapln4ano2018a37
Marques, I. S., & Koven, M. (2017). "We are going to our Portuguese homeland!" French Luso-descendants' diasporic Facebook conarrations of vacation return trips to Portugal. Narrative Inquiry, 27(2), 286-310. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.27.2.05sim
Koven, M. (2016). Essentialization strategies in the storytellings of young Luso-descendant women in France: Narrative calibration, voicing, and scale. Language and Communication, 46, 19-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2015.10.005