Christine Mallinson is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. She has co-authored an article with Walt Wolfram on the regional accommodation of African American English in Appalachia, and she is currently conducting fieldwork with Becky Childs (University of Georgia) in an African American community in Cherokee County, North Carolina. Her long-term research goal is to continue working with regional and ethnic dialects to investigate the role of language as a marker of ethnic and regional identity.