Cecilia E. Ford is Professor of English Language and Linguistics / Rhetoric and Composition and an affiliate of Women's Studies, the Second Language Acquisition Program, and the Language Institute . Her research focuses on language as an interactional phenomenon.  In her books and edited collections, Grammar and Interaction: Adverbial Clauses in American English Conversations (1993), Interaction-Based Studies of Language (1996), The Language of Turn and Sequence (2002),  Sound Patterns in Interaction: Cross-linguistic Studies of Phonetics and Prosody for Conversation (2004), and Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings (2008), Ford draws on conversation analysis as a framework for discovering the ways that humans construct, on a moment-by-moment basis, the social orders that make up our lives—including the provisional and emergent practices we call language. 

     Some of Ford’s special interests are language structures, interactional practices and the construction of social positions through talk. She has been particularly fascinated with the architecture of turns at talk and how humans collaborate and improvise in social interaction, using contingent practices including grammar, sound production, and physical orientations (gesture, gaze, body position).

Beginning with her first publication, on language-based stereotyping in public schools (TESOL Quarterly, 1984), Ford has maintained a commitment to addressing issues relevant to language and society. In her recent work with the NSF-funded Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Ford has used conversation analysis for decidedly applied and feminist ends.

Cecilia Ford welcomes opportunities to share perspectives and findings from her research with groups outside of linguistics, discourse analysis and beyond the academic community.