Dr. Bethany Gray

Short Biography

 Bethany Gray joined the English Department and the TESL/Applied Linguistics Program in Fall 2012. Her research focuses on applying corpus linguistics methodologies to the study of linguistic variation across registers and speakers/writers (learners and native speakers of English) to increase our understanding of how the grammatical, lexico-grammatical, and lexical resources of English are utilized to carry out communicative purposes. Her research has particularly focused on academic writing, documenting disciplinary and register variation within academic writing (both synchronically and diachronically). She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Applied Linguistics and English, including courses in descriptive English grammar, Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, academic writing for native and non-native speakers, and content-based English as a Second Langage.

Office/Office Hours

•  office: 355 Ross Hall
• office hours: T 1:00-2:00 and W 9:00-10:00
• office phone: (515) 294-3236
• email: begray@iastate.edu 

Research & Teaching Interests

•  Register Variation (Synchronic and Diachronic)
• Academic Writing and Disciplinary Variation
• Corpus Linguistics Methodologies
• Descriptive English Grammar
• Discourse Analysis

Selected Publications

Refereed Journal Articles

Gray, B. (2010). On the use of demonstrative pronouns and determiners as cohesive devices: A focus on sentence-initial this/these in academic prose. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9, 167-183.

Gray, B., & Cortes, V. (2010). Perception vs. evidence: An analysis of this and these in academic prose. English for Specific Purposes, 30(1), 31-43.

Gray, B., & Biber, D. (in press). Lexical frames in academic prose and conversation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (invited contribution to special issue on phraseology).

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (forthcoming). Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-register. Journal of English Linguistics.

Biber, D., Gray, B., & Poonpon, K. (forthcoming). Pay attention to the phrasal structures: Going beyond T-units. A response to Weiwei Yang. TESOL Quarterly.

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2011). Grammar emerging in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use. English Language & Linguistics, 15(2), 223-250.

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2010). Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9, 2-20.

Biber, D., Gray, B., & Poonpon, K. (2011). Should we use characteristics of conversation to measure grammatical complexity in L2 writing development? TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 5-35.

Edited Book Chapters

Gray, B., & Biber, D. (in press). Current conceptions of stance. In K. Hyland & C. Sancho Guinda (eds.), Stance and voice in academic discourse. Palgrave.

Gray, B., & Biber, D. (2012). The emergence and evolution of the pattern N + of + V-ing in historical scientific texts. In I. Moskowich & B. Crespo (eds.), Astronomy ‘playne and simple’: The writing of science between 1700 and 1900. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gray, B., & Biber, D. (2011). Corpus approaches to the analysis of discourse. In K. Hyland & B. Paltridge (eds.), Companion to Discourse Analysis (pp. 138-152). Continuum.

Gray, B., Biber, D., & Hiltunen, T.  (2011). The expression of stance in early (1665-1712) publications of the Philosophical Transactions and other contemporary medical prose: Innovations in a pioneering discourse. In I. Taavitsainen & P. Pahta (eds.), Medical Writing in Early Modern English. Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (in press). Nominalizing the verb phrase in academic science writing. In B. Aarts, J. Close, S. Wallis, & G. Leech (eds.), The verb phrase in English: Investigating recent language change with corpora (pp. 99-132). Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2012). The competing demands of popularization vs. economy: Written language in the age of mass literacy. In E. Traugott & T. Nevalainen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on the history of English. Oxford University Press.

Affiliations

 American Association for Applied Linguistics

Degrees

 Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics, Northern Arizona University.  2011. 

M.A. in TESL/Applied Linguistics, Iowa State University. 2006. 

B.A. in Linguistics and English (RPC), Iowa State University. 2004.