Laurel Sutton (she/her) is a linguist, strategist, and co-founder of Catchword, a naming and branding agency. Her love of linguistics began with a BA in Linguistics at Rutgers University and continued in graduate school at UC Berkeley, where she specialized in both sociolinguistics and phonetics. She has co-edited two volumes on gender and linguistics, as well as a volume celebrating Robin Lakoff’s contribution to the field. She is the President of the American Name Society and a Committee Chair of the Linguistic Society of America, and has served as an expert witness on naming and branding issues. She is delighted that her most-cited paper, written in 1994, was one of the first to look at the issue of gender and online communication (“Using USENET: Gender, Power, and Silence in Electronic Discourse”). …
When did you first join the LSA?
I joined the LSA in 1994, when I presented my first paper at the annual conference in Boston (part of the requirements for my Master’s degree at UC Berkeley). I was a member until I left academia in 1998. I rejoined in 2015 when I became involved with the Linguistics Beyond Academia SIG. …
