Benjamin Torbert

Associate Professor
Associate Department Chair
Graduate Program Director 
420 Lucas Hall
314-516-6848
torbertb@umsl.edu

PhD, English, Linguistics concentration, Duke University
MA, English, Linguistics concentration, North Carolina State University
BA, Classical Languages, Duke University

A sociolinguist, Benjamin Torbert studies English language variety in North America and the Caribbean, especially regional and socioethnic dimensions of language variation. He has authored and co-authored publications on language variety in American Speech, Southern Journal of Linguistics, the de Gruyter World Atlas of Varieties of English, and in other venues. Other interests include pedagogy in the teaching of Linguistics, syntax in English-language literature, and portrayals of vernacular speakers in television and in film. 

Courses Taught at UMSL

HON 3010 and EN 5950/Language, Ethnicity, and Inequality in HBO's The Wire

HON 3010/The Linguistic Study of African American English 

HON 3010/Revelations of Grace: The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor

HON 3010 and EN 4950/Opera Literature

EN 4800/Introduction to Linguistics

EN 4810/Descriptive English Grammar

EN 4820/History of the English Language

EN 4830/English Sociolinguistics

EN 5800/Variety in Language 



Curriculum Vitae

CV

Other Files

Dr. Eugene Charles Torbert (obituary)