Sally Walker (academic)

Sally Walker is an Australian linguist and academic specializing in sociolinguistics, particularly language and gender, interactional sociolinguistics, and forensic linguistics. She is known for her research on courtroom discourse, police interviews, and the use of language in shaping identity and social relations.

Walker holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Sydney and has held academic positions at various universities in Australia and internationally. Her research often employs qualitative methods such as discourse analysis and conversation analysis to examine naturally occurring talk and text.

Her work has explored topics such as the construction of credibility in legal settings, the use of hedging and mitigation strategies in interaction, and the role of language in conveying power and status. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, contributing significantly to the understanding of language use in institutional contexts. Walker's research aims to provide insights into how language is used to achieve social goals and to illuminate the complexities of human communication. She has also been involved in applying linguistic expertise to forensic contexts, such as analyzing disputed utterances and authorship attribution.