Room A15, AC Jordan

Ana Deumert is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. Her research program is located within the broad field of sociolinguistics and has a strong transdisciplinary focus. She publishes extensively in journals and has contributed chapters to many edited collections. 

Her book publications include Germanic Standardizations – Past to Present (with Wim Vandenbussche), Language Standardization and Language Change: The Dynamics of Cape Dutch (2004),  A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics (with Joan Swann, Theresa Lillis and Rajend Mesthrie, 2004), Structure and Variation in Language Contact (with Stephanie Durrleman-Tame), Introducing Sociolinguistics (with Rajend Mesthrie, Joan Swann and William Leap, 2009), Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication (2014), Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics – Knowledges and Epistemes (with Anne Storch and Nick Shepherd, 2020), Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship: Education, Narrative and Episteme (with Quentin Williams and Tommaso Milani, 2022), and From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Linguistics(with Sinfree Makoni, 2023). 

She is co-editor of Edinburgh Sociolinguistics, Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact (CUP) and Encounters (Multilingual Matters, Bristol). She also serves on the boards of several international journals. She is a recipient of the Neville Alexander Award for the Promotion of Multilingualism (2014) and the Humboldt Research Award (2016). She was an Honorary Research Fellow at University of the West Indies (2022-2024) and a Professor II at Inland University Of Applied Sciences, Norway (2022-2023). In 2023, she held a visiting professorship at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and since 2025 she is the spokesperson of the International Advisory Board of the College for Social Sciences and Humanities (Essen, Germany). 

Areas of supervision: sociolinguistics; applied linguistics; (socio-)historical linguistics; semiotics; digital media; language and politics; hauntological approaches to social life; sound studies; (socio-)linguistics and the black radical tradition

Courses: Ana Deumert teaches the following topics in the linguistics program (undergraduate and post-graduate): historical linguistics (ASL3300F), social-media sociolinguistics (ASL2300S), semiotics and theories of language (ASL3300F), research methodology (ASL4321F), language ecology (ASL4323FS /ASL5323FS) and the cultural politics of language (ASL4317S /ASL5302S)

Current work: Her current work explores the use of language and art in global political movements as well as the contributions anti-colonial thought can make to sociolinguistic theory. She is currently working on a monograph which focuses on the political semiotics of sound and music.