Stefan is interested in the connection of language and identity, broadly construed, which he most often explores from the vantage points of sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, dialectology and lexicography. He has published monographs on Canadian English, Austrian German and other non-dominant language varieties with Routledge, Cambridge University Press, John Benjamins and new academic press in Vienna. The editor-in-chief of the second edition of A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (UBC, 2017; www.dchp.ca/dchp2) has been at UBC English Language and Literatures since his postdoctoral days. Before his time as Full Professor at UBC, however, he held a research chair at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and was Canadian Studies guest professor at the University of Kiel, Germany

When teaching, Stefan focuses on the connection of theory with practice and brings an authentic research experience to the class, even in first year. Working with real language material from actual situations and speakers is key in his teaching.

Teaching areas: all areas of sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language variation and word meaning and lexicography, structure of English

My research interests coalesce around historical linguistics, dialectology and sociolinguistics. As chief editor of The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCHP-2), I have been heavily involved with lexicography. DCHP-2’s online context allowed me to hone my digital humanities skills. My overall motivation is driven by the exploration of patterns in language variation and change and by the integration of historical and present-day data and approaches. I have worked on methodological questions, including the application of written questionnaires to current research questions and contexts and, recently, more on Austrian German.

Public outreach and knowledge dissemination is important to me, as I consult on linguistic issues (e.g. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV Newsworld, Global TV BC, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun); I have given public talks and lectures on various linguistic topics (e.g. on Global Englishes, Canadian English, the history of English, dictionary making, questions of language use) and I take an avid interest in language pedagogical questions and questions of multilingualism and linguistic rights.

Publications (since 2016)

Monographs

Dollinger, Stefan. 2021. [Austrian German or German in Austria? Identities in the 21st Century] Österreichisches Deutsch oder Deutsch in Österreich? Identitäten im 21. Jahrhundert. 3^rd ed. Vienna, Hamburg: new academic press.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. The Pluricentricity Debate: On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties. London: Routledge (Focus Series).

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Creating Canadian English: the Professor, the Mountaineer, and a National Variety of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2016. The Written Questionnaire in Social Dialectology: History, Theory, Practice. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins (IMPACT Series, 40).

Historical dictionaries

Dollinger, Stefan (chief editor) and Margery Fee (associate editor). 2017. DCHP-2: The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, Second Edition. With the assistance of Alexandra Gaylie, Baillie Ford and Gabrielle Lim. www.dchp.ca/dchp2. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia.

Dollinger, Stefan (ed.-in-chief), Laurel J. Brinton and Margery Fee (eds). 2013. DCHP-1 Online: A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles Online. Based on Walter S. Avis et al. (1967). www.dchp.ca/dchp1. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia.

Journal articles

Jones, Emilie* and Stefan Dollinger. Submitted. The missing parents: Indigenous kinship and education in the 1958 Hawthorn report. Journal of Canadian Studies. * MA student

Ferrett, Emma* and Stefan Dollinger. 2020. Is digital always better? Comparing two English print dictionaries with their current digital counterparts. International Journal of Lexicography https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecaa016

* MA student

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Debunking “pluri-areality”: on the pluricentric perspective of national varieties. Journal of Linguistic Geography 7(2): 98-112.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2017. TAKE UP #9 as a semantic isogloss on the Canada-US border. World Englishes 36(1): 80-103.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2016. Googleology as smart lexicography: big, messy data for better regional labels. Dictionaries 37: 60-98.

Book chapters 

Dollinger, Stefan. forthc. Prescriptivism and national identities: history, theory, and cross-linguistic analyses of non-dominant varieties. In Routledge Handbook of Prescriptivism, ed. by Joan Beal, Morana Lukač and Robin Straaije. Vol. 1: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. Abingdon: Routledge.

Dollinger, Stefan, Vanessa Chan*, Anthony Maag* and Kate Pasula*. forthc. Attitudes towards World Englishes in Canada: are elementary school children linguistically more tolerant than adults? In World Englishes: Rethinking Paradigms and Approaches, ed. by Thorsten Brato, Sarah Buschfeld and Mirjam Schmalz. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * BA students

Dollinger, Stefan and Alexandra Doherty*. forthc. Mah-kook, Skookum, Tillicum: Chinook Jargon loanwords in the changing discursive construction of a British Columbian settler identity. In Language Contact and the History of English Lexicon: Processes and Effects on Specific Text-Types, ed. by Gabriella Mazzon. Berne: Lang (Austrian Studies in English). * recent MA graduate

Dollinger, Stefan. In press. The open-class lexis of Canadian English: history, structure and social & regional correlations. In The New Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 5 ed. by Natalie Schilling-Estes, Derek Denis and Raymond Hickey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dollinger, Stefan. In press. Canadian English lexis and semantics: an assessment in contrastive, real-time perspective, 1683 – 2016. Early North American Englishes, ed. by Merja Kytö and Lucia Siebers. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2021. English Lexicography: A global perspective. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, 2^nd ed. Ed. by Bas Aarts, April McMahon, and Lars Hinrichs, 525-546. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2020. Canadian English dictionaries: the first century (1912-2017). In The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries, ed. by Sarah Ogilvie, 255-264. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2020. English in Canada. In: Handbook of World Englishes, Second edition, ed. by Cecil Nelson, Zoya Proshina & Daniel Davis, 52-69. Malden, MA: Blackwell-Wiley.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. ‘I hope you will excuse my bad writing’: shall vs. will in the 1830s Petworth Emigration to Canada Corpus (PECC). In Keeping in Touch:
Familiar Letters across the English-speaking World, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 43-66. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 10).

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Dictionaries and Lexicography: Research-oriented Approaches for Larger Lower-level HEL Classes. In Teaching the History of the English Language, ed. by Colette Moore and Chris Palmer, 213-24. MLA Options in Teaching Series.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2018. How old is ‘eh’? On the early history of a Canadian shibboleth. In: Wa7 xweysás i nqwal’utteníha i ucwalmícwa: He loves the people’s languages. Essays in honour of Henry Davis, ed. by Lisa Matthewson, Erin Guntly, Marianne Huijsmans and Michael Rochemont, 469-488. Vancouver, BC: UBC [UBC Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 6].

Dollinger, Stefan. 2017. Revising the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles: World Englishes and linguistic variation in real-time. In The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography, ed. by Pedro A. Fuertes Olivera (in the section on “Innovative Online Dictionaries), 367-382. London Routledge.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2017. Canadian English in real-time perspective. In History of English. Vol. V: Varieties of English, ed. by Alexander Bergs & Laurel Brinton, 53-79. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton (De Gruyter Mouton Reader Series).

Dollinger, Stefan. 2016. On the regrettable dichotomy between philology and linguistics: historical lexicography and historical linguistics as test cases. In Studies in the History of English VII: Generalizing vs. Particularizing Methodologies in Historical Linguistic Analysis, ed. by Don Chapman, Colette Moore and Miranda Wilcox, 61-89. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Miscellaneous

Dollinger, Stefan and Victoria Neufeldt. In press. Paddy Dockar Drysdale (1929–2020). Canadian Journal of Linguistics 66(2).

Dollinger, Stefan. 2021. “Canada’s Word Lady: Katherine Barber (1959-2021)” Dictionary Society of North America. Newsletter fall 2021.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2020. Review of Filatkina, Natalia. 2018. Historische Formelhafte Sprache. Berlin: de Gruyter [in English]. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 32(1): 96-106.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Review of Peter Matthews. 2019. What Graeco-Roman Grammar Was About. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xii+243. US$ 75. Journal of Greek Linguistics 19: 255-63.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Review of Florian Coulmas. 2018. An Introduction to Multilingualism: Language in a Changing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Englishes 38: 677-80. (20 Nov. 2019)

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Review of Nan Jiang. 2018. Second Language Processing: An Introduction. New York & Abingdon: Routledge. English World-Wide 40(1): 109­–114.

Dollinger, Stefan. 2016. Generation XYZ? Lexicology hard on the limits of the generational metaphor. Review of Allan Metcalf. 2016. From Skedadaddle to Selfie: Words of the Generations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xvi+209 pages, $19.95 (ebk $12.99). American Speech 91(3): 385-390.