Marcia Farr

Marcia Farr's long-term interest in language, literacy, and ethnicity has been nurtured in various contexts: she taught English at an "urban-suburban" high school in Prince George's County, Maryland; she lived, studied, and worked in Washington, D.C for 17 years; she lived in, taught in, and studied the "urban ethnic mosaic" of Chicago for 20 years; and she lived in Michoacán, Mexico for a year while on a Fulbright research fellowship and doing fieldwork.Her initial sociolinguistic interest in the relationship between (oral) dialect variation and literacy expanded to include a broader ethnographic focus on cultural variation in language and literacy. Two major projects grew out of this broader ethnographic study of language use: first, her own long-term Ethnography of Communication of transnational Mexican families in Chicago and Mexico, and second, a graduate specialization at the University of Illinois at Chicago that resulted in 20 dissertations on language and literacy within a variety of Chicago ethnic communities (see publications in Research Biography below).Links

• Marcia Farr's Academia.edu Profile
• Center for Applied Linguistics
• Language and Linguistics Compass

• 1976 - Ph.D. in Linguistics, Georgetown University.
• 1970 - M.A. in Linguistics, American University.
• 1965 - B.A. in English, Ohio Wesleyan University.

As a sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist, Farr studies oral and written language use in social and cultural context, as well as how these various local ways of using language and literacy affect the teaching and learning of academic literacy. After earning a Ph.D. in linguistics from Georgetown University, she directed the funding of research on writing at the National Institute of Education from 1976-1982. She edited a research series, Written Language, first for Ablex and then Hampton Press, and she has served on numerous Advisory and Editorial Boards.Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (Linguistics Program), the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the Fulbright Foundation. She recently completed a long-term ethnographic study of language and culture among a transnational social network of Mexican families in Chicago and in their village-of-origin in Michoacán, Mexico (Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and Identity in a Transnational Mexican Community, University of Texas Press, 2006). A pair of edited books Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City's Neighborhoods, Erlbaum, 2004, and Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago, Erlbaum, 2005) explore language and/or literacy practices in a variety of Chicago communities, including African American, African, Lithuanian, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, "White" working and middle class, Swedish, Mexican, and Puerto Rican. A third edited book (with Lisya Seloni and Juyoung Song), Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Education: Language, Literacy, and Culture (Routledge, 2010), explores the implications of ethnolinguistic diversity for education.

• General Editor of series, Writing Research: Multidisciplinary Inquiries into the Nature of Writing, Ablex Publishing Co., 1982 - 1992.
• General Editor of series, Written Language, Hampton Press, 1992 - 2000
• Editorial Board of Discourse Processes journal, 1983 - 1991
• Editorial Board of Written Communication journal, 1989 – 2007
• Executive Committee, Literacy Studies @ OSU, 2004 - 2009
• Co-Chair, Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Literacy Studies, OSU, 2006 - 2009

Key Appointments

• 2002 - present. Professor of Education and English, Ohio State University.
• 1982 - 2002. Professor of English and Linguistics, Dept. of English, University of Illinois at Chicago; Professor Emerita since 2002.
• 1976 - 1982. U.S. National Institute of Education, Senior Research Associate and Team Leader for Research on Writing.

Teaching

• Edu T&L 665: Applied Linguistics
• Edu T&L 803: Language in Society
• Edu T&L 844: Bilingualism and Biliteracy
• Edu T&L 848: Linguistic Diversity and Literacy
• Edu T&L 906: Language Learning across Cultures
• Edu T&L 931 and 932: The Ethnography of Communication I and II
• English 750: Introduction to Graduate Studies in Literacy

• National Science Foundation Fellowship (for Graduate School) (September 1970 - June 1971 and September 1971 - June 1972)
• Fulbright Research Scholar at El Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, Michoacán, Mexico; American Republics Research Program (Mexico), 1995 - 1996
• Great Cities Institute Scholar Award, UIC, AY 2001 - 2002

• Spencer Foundation Research Grant ("Language, Literacy, and Gender: Oral Traditions and Literacy Practices among Mexican Immigrant Families"), June, 1995 - June, 1998. $265,130.
• Spencer Foundation Grant ("Oral Folk Texts and Literacy among Mexican Immigrants in Chicago"), Sept., 1990 - Sept., 1993. $296,700.
• National Science Foundation (Linguistics Program) grant ("Mexican American Literacy in Chicago: A Sociolinguistic Study of Two Neighborhoods"), Aug.1, 1988 through July 31, 1990. With Professor Lucía Elías-Olivares. $75,180.

• Farr, M. 2010. Literacy ideologies: Local practices and cultural definitions, in J. Kalman and B. Street (eds.), Lectura, escritura y matemáticas como prácticas sociales: diálogos con América Latina. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
• Farr, M. Forthcoming. Urban plurilingualism: Language ideologies, practices, and policies in Chicago, in Jürgen Jaspers & J. Verschueren (eds.), Urban Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication, special issue of Pragmatics.
• Farr, M. 2007. Literacies and ethnolinguistic diversity: Chicago. In B. Street (ed.), Volume on Literacy, Nancy Hornberger (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and education. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag.
• Farr, M. 2006. Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and identity in a transnational community. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Farr, M. and Dominguez, E. 2005. Mexicanos in Chicago: Language ideology and identity. In A.C. Zentella (ed.), Building on strengths: Language and literacy in Latino families, and communities. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Farr, M. (ed.). 2005. Latino language and literacy in ethnolinguistic Chicago. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Farr, M. (ed.). 2004. Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and literacy in the city's neighborhoods. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Farr, M. and Ball, A. 2001. Standard English and educational policy, Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science.
• Farr, M. and Nardini, G. 1996. Essayist literacy and sociolinguistic difference, in E. White, W. Lutz, and S. Kamusikiri (eds.), The politics and policies of assessment in writing. New York: Modern Language Association.
• Farr, M. and Guerra, J. 1995. Literacy in the community: A study of mexicano families in Chicago, Discourse Processes Special Issue, Literacy Among Latinos, 19:1, 7-19.
• Farr, M. 1994a. En los dos idiomas: Literacy practices among mexicano families in Chicago. Literacy across communities. Ed. Beverly Moss. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
• Farr, M. 1994b. Biliteracy in the home: Practices among mexicano families in Chicago, in D. Spener (ed.), Adult biliteracy in the United States. McHenry, IL and Washington, D.C.: Delta Systems and Center for Applied Linguistics.
• Farr, M. 1994c. Echando relajo: Verbal art and gender among mexicanas in Chicago, in M. Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, L.A. Sutton, and C. Hines (eds.), Cultural performances: Proceedings of the third women and language conference, April 8-10, 1994. University of California, Berkeley.
• Farr, M. (ed.). 1985. Advances in writing research: Children's early writing development. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
• Whiteman, M. F. 1981. Dialect influence in writing, in M. F. Whiteman (ed), Variation in writing: Functional and linguistic cultural differences. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Whiteman, M. F. (ed.). 1981. Variation in writing: Functional and linguistic cultural differences. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Whiteman, M. F. (ed.). 1980. Vernacular Black English and education: Reactions to Ann Arbor. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.