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Heather Littlefield
Associate Academic Specialist in Linguistics, Assistant Director and Head Advisor of Linguistics
617.373.3164
Expertise
acquisition of syntactic categories in first language acquisition, syntactic distinction of lexical and functional categories, syntax of African languages

Heather Littlefield for Northeastern Global News

3Qs: What using the name ‘Daesh,’ rather than ‘ISIS’ or ‘ISIL,’ really means

Three faculty members—Jonathan Kaufman, director of the School of Journalism, Shakir Mustafa, teaching professor of Arabic, and Heather Littlefield, associate teaching professor in linguistics—explain the differences among the names ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh and why they matter.

3Qs: The evolution of profanity

Instead of saying “Pardon my French” when we curse, we should be saying, “Pardon my Old English,” says Heather Littlefield, head advisor of the linguistics program at Northeastern.

3Qs: Not your mother’s neologisms

“Lolz,” “photobombing” and “mwahahaha” have recently been added to Oxford Dictionaries Online, prompting a discussion of our modern taste for digital jargon.