The Blue Ridge Mountains form part of the mystique around the Appalachian region.
The Blue Ridge Mountains form part of the mystique around the Appalachian region.

My research has two main foci: language variation and change, particularly in the varieties of English in the Southern United States, and the perception of phonetic processes. My work has examined variation in the Appalachian region, with an emphasis on vocalic and intonational variation. I examine the effect that socio-indexical aspects of individuals have on various phonetic processes. Also, I have investigated various phonetic processes and how they affect or impact the perception and processing of speech. Some of these processes are locus equations, the impact of noise, how signal degradation and speech rate affects connected speech perception, and syllable structure.

Other areas of interest are statistical analysis, particularly mixed effects models and other hierarchical linear models. I have served as a statistical consultant for several projects, from the acquisition of spelling to lipreading.

Outside of my phonetic work, I have investigated other aspects of the linguistics of Southern American English, primarily the syntax of multiple modals, negation, and auxiliary movement. In a related vein, I am the co-director, with Michael Montgomery, of MultiMo, a searchable database of published and unpublished tokens of multiple modals.

Here, you can find materials relevant to my published research and presentations.

I provide full links for these papers that have appeared and to presentations and posters.
My CV contains more information about other projects that are in various stages of the publication process.

Publications

Books

Carmichael, Katie and Paul E. Reed. 2025. Language and Place. Elements of Sociolinguistics. Cambridge University Press.

Reed, Paul E. and Becky Childs. In press. The New South: Language and Place in the 21st Century. Routledge.

Reed, Paul E. In preparation. Appalachian English Varieties. Mouton De Gruyter.

Reed, Paul E. and Jennifer Cramer (eds.). In preparation. Oxford Handbook of Appalachian Englishes. Oxford University Press.

Articles

Lee-Bey, Brittany, Frances K. Blanchette, Jessi A. Grieser, Paul E. Reed, and Cynthia Lukyanenko. 2026. Microvariation in the interpretation of English Negative Sentence. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 11(1), 6054.

Holliday, Nicole R. and Paul E. Reed. 2025. Gender and racial bias issues in a commercial ‘tone of voice’ analysis system. PLoS One 20(2).

Blanchette, Frances K., Carrie Jackson, Erin Flannery, and Paul E. Reed. 2024. Adaptation at the syntax-semantics interface: Evidence from a vernacular construction. Language and Speech 67(1), 140-165.

Burdin, Rachel Steindel, Nicole R. Holliday, and Paul E. Reed. 2024. Can listeners differentiate varieties using prosodic information? Lect identification in a persona-matching task. Glossa 9.

Baese-Berk, Melissa and Paul E. Reed. 2023. Addressing diversity in speech science courses. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 154(2), 918-925.

Burdin, Rachel Steindel, Nicole R. Holliday, and Paul E. Reed. 2022. American English pitch accents in variation: Pushing the boundaries of Mainstream American English ToBI conventions. Journal of Phonetics 94

Hendricks, Allison E., Mikayla Watson-Wales, and Paul E. Reed. 2021. Perceptions of African American English by students in speech-language pathology programs. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 30(5), 1962-1972.

Blanchette, Frances K., Paul E. Reed, Erin Flannery, and Carrie Jackson. 2020. Linguistic diversity in Appalachia: The case of negative auxiliary inversion. American Speech 95(3), 297-320.

Reed, Paul E. 2020. Inter- and intra-regional variation in intonation: An analysis of rising pitch accents and rootedness. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 147(1), 616-626.

Reed, Paul E. 2020. Place and language: Links between speech, region, and connection to place. WIREs Cognitive Science 11(60).

Reed, Paul E. 2020. Prosodic variation and rootedness in Appalachian English. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 25(2).

Reed, Paul E. 2020. The importance of rootedness in the study of Appalachian English: Case study evidence for a proposed rootedness metric. American Speech 95(2), 203-226.

Werfel, Krystal, Melanie Schuele, and Paul E. Reed. 2019. Linguistic contributions to spelling accuracy in elementary children with SLI. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology 28(2), 599-611.

Burdin, Rachel Steindel, Nicole Holliday, and Paul E. Reed. 2018. Rising above the standard: Variation in L+H* contour use across 5 varieties of American English. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 9, 354-358.

Reed, Paul E. 2018. The importance of Appalachian identity: A case study in rootedness. American Speech 93(3-4).

Hay-McCutcheon, Marcia, Paul E. Reed, and Spyridoula Cheimariou. 2018. Positive social interaction and hearing loss in older adults living in rural and urban communities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 61, 2138-2145.

Montgomery, Allen A., Paul E. Reed, Kimberley A. Crass, H. Isabel Hubbard, and Joanna Stith. 2014. The effects of measurement error and vowel removal on the locus equation measure of coarticulation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 136(5), 2747-2750.

Reed, Paul E. 2014. Inter- and intra- generational monophthongization and Southern Appalachian identity. Southern Journal of Linguistics 38(1), 159-193.

Book Chapters

Childs, Becky and Paul E. Reed. 2026. English in the Southern United States. In The New Cambridge History of the English Language: North America and the Caribbean. Ed. Natalie Schilling, Derek Denis, and Raymond Hickey. Cambridge University Press, pp. 243-273.

Reed, Paul E. Appalachian Englishes. 2026. In Language Varieties in North America: A Primer for Speech and Language Practictioners. Ed. Elena Babatsouli, Yolanda F. Holt, and Karla N. Washington. Multilingual Matters.

Reed, Paul E. Appalachian Englishes. 2025 In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes. Ed. Kingsley Bolton. Wiley Blackwell.

Reed, Paul E. 2020. Phonological possibilities in Appalachian English. In Appalachian Englishes in the 21st Century. Ed. Kirk Hazen. Morganton, WV: WVU Press, pp.20-35.

Reed, Paul E. 2018. Appalachia, monophthongization, and intonation: Rethinking tradition. In Language Variety in the New South: Contemporary Perspectives on Change and Variation Eds. Jeffrey Reaser, Eric Wilbanks, Karissa Wojcik, and Walt Wolfram. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, pp.97-112.

Book Reviews

Reed, Paul E. 2026. Mountain Splendor, Mountain Speech: Review of The Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English. American Speech 101(1), 109-112.

Reed, Paul E. 2025. Review of The Origins of Missouri English: A Historical Sociophonetic Analysis. English Language and Lingusitics 30(2), 447-449.

Reed, Paul E. 2018. Review of What you are getting wrong about Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte and Ramp Hollow by Steven Stoll. Journal of the Working Class Studies Association 3(2), 113-116.

Reed, Paul E. 2014. Defining the field: A comprehensive introduction to sociophonetics. Review of Sociophonetics: An Introduction by Erik R. Thomas. American Speech 89(1), 111-114.

Outreach Publications

Reed, Paul E. 2016. Mountain Talk. Tar Heel Junior Historian Magazine Spring

Submitted Papers

Farrington, Charlie, Paul E. Reed, and Alyssa Nazigan. Accepted. A American English Variant: Indefinite article variation in Appalachian and African American Englishes. In Language Variety in the South 5. Ed. Bill Kretzschmar. University of Georgia Press.

Reed, Paul E. Submitted. Countering Stigman: Place-based attitudes in Appalachian English. In Accent, Attitude, and Sound Change. Ed. Becky Roeder and Gabriela Alfaraz. John Benjamins.

Reed, Paul E. Submitted. Language, People, and History: A Background on the Development of Appalachian Englishes. In The Oxford Handbook of Appalachian Writing and Culture. Ed. Mae Claxton, Jessica Cory, and Travis Rountree. Oxford University Press.

Reed, Paul E. Submitted. Language, place, and Speech-Language Pathology. American Speech

Reed, Paul E. Submitted. Sociophonetics of Intonation. In The Oxford Handbook of Sociophonetics. Ed. Jennifer Nycz and Paul De Decker. Oxford University Press.

Selected Recent Presentations and Posters

Grieser, Jessi A., Frances K. Blanchette, Cynthia Lukyanenko, and Paul E. Reed. 2026. Negation without stigma: Toward anti-bias in experimental methodology. Paper presented at Sociolinguistic Symposium 26. East London, South Africa. July 13-15.

Reed, Paul E. 2026b. The roots of place: A case study in Appalachian features and place. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) Annual Conference in Atlanta, GA in March 26-28.

Reed, Paul E. 2026a. Appalachian English Through a More Than Lens: Rootedness and variation in Appalachian English. Paper presented at the 49th Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meeting in Marshall, WV, March 19-21.

Blanchette, Frances K., Cynthia Lukyanenko, Jessi A. Grieser, Paul E. Reed, and Brittany Lee-Bey. 2026. Microvariation in the interpretation of American English negative sentences. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. Jan 8-11.

Blanchette, Frances K., Jessi A. Grieser, Cynthia Lukyanenko, and Paul E. Reed. 2025. Microsyntactic variation in American English negative concord: Evidence from eye-tracking. Paper presented at the REEDS Workshop on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Morphosyntactic Variation (MUMOVA). Leuven, Belgium. Dec 11-12.

Reed, Paul E. 2025d. Back vowel fronting and the Southern Shift in Alabama: Regional Differentiation or Ecological Distinction? Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 53 in Ann Arbor, MI. Nov 5-7.

Reed, Paul E. 2025c. Back vowel fronting in Northeast Tennessee. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics Annual Meeting in Boca Raton, FL. April 10-12.

Reed, Paul E. 2025b. An individual view of Appalachian Englishes: A lifetime of change. Paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meeting in Cookeville, TN. March 20-22.

Reed, Paul E. 2025a. Place-based attitudes in Appalachian Englishes. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA January 9-12.

Reed, Paul E. 2024c. Regional prosodic variation in Alabama English. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 52, Miami Beach, FL November 7-9.

Reed, Paul E. 2024b. The meaning of place in regional orientation. Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE), Vienna, Austria, July 11, 2024.

Reed, Paul E. and Becky Childs. 2024. The rate and pace of change in Appalachian English. Paper presented at the deciennial Language Variation in the South (LAVIS) V/Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) conference in Athens, GA.

Farrington, Charlie, Alyssa Nazigian, and Paul E. Reed. 2024. Indefinite article variation in Appalachian and African American Englishes. Paper presented at the decennial Language Variation in the South (LAVIS) V/Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) conference in Athens, GA.

Reed, Paul E. 2024a. Regional variation in prosodic rhythm in Appalachian English. Paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Association annual conference in Cullowhee, NC.

Holliday, Nicole R. and Paul E. Reed. 2024. Tone it Down: Inherent bias in automated ‘tone of voice’ evaluation. Short presentation at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, January 4-7, NYC.

Reed, Paul E., and Melissa Baese-Berk. 2023. Addressing diversity in speech science courses. Paper presented at the Acoustical Society of American Spring Meeting in Chicago, IL. May 8-12.

Reed, Paul E. 2023c. Rural and urban differences in Appalachian Alabama. Paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) Annual Conference. Athens, OH. March 16-19.

Reed, Paul E. 2023b. Place matters: Velar nasal fronting in northeast Tennessee. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) 90. Oxford, MS. March 9-11.

Reed, Paul E. 2023a. Prosodic and regional variation in Alabama English. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society (ADS) Annual Meeting. Denver, CO. Jan 5-8.

Holliday, Nicole R., and Paul E. Reed. 2022. Watch your tone: Race, gender, and voice quality in automated ‘tone of voice’ evaluation. Paper presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 in Ghent, Belgium. July 13-16.

Reed, Paul E. 2022b. Meaningful places: College students, rootedness, and the Southern Vowel Shift. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) 89. Virtual meeting (hosted by Louisiana State University).

Reed, Paul E. 2022a. The Southern Vowel Shift and meaningful places: How attachment to place affects vowel production among college students. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society (ADS) Annual Meeting. Virtual meeting.

Farrington, Charlie, Chloe Tacata, and Paul E. Reed. 2021. A American English variant: Indefinite article variation in American English. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 49. Virtual meeting (hosted by the University of Texas).

Reed, Paul E. 2021b. Incorporating dialect diversity in the introductory phonetics classroom: The class is the data. Paper presented at the Acoustical Society of America Spring Meeting. Virtual meeting.