Rate My Professor Chloe Diskin-Holdaway

Chloé Diskin-Holdaway is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne. She earned her PhD in Sociolinguistics from University College Dublin in 2016. Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, discourse-pragmatic variation, language attitudes and ideologies, migration studies, pragmatic and discourse markers, and language variation and change. Previously based in Ireland, her early work examined language acquisition and integration among Polish and Chinese migrants in Dublin, exploring how migrants adopt local Irish English features while maintaining aspects of their heritage languages.

Diskin-Holdaway has secured research grants totaling AUD$1.33 million as of 2020. She received the Best Student Paper Award at the Discourse-Pragmatics conference in 2014. Her influential publications include the co-edited book Language, Identity and Migration: Voices from Transnational Speakers and Communities (Peter Lang, 2016), which examines language practices among transnational communities. Her most cited paper, 'The use of the discourse-pragmatic marker ‘like’ by native and non-native speakers of English in Ireland' (Journal of Pragmatics, 2017), analyzes pragmatic functions and variation in quotatives. Other key works are 'Needs and demands for heritage language support in Australia: results from a nationwide survey' (Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2023), 'Going global and sounding local: Quotative variation and change in L1 and L2 speakers of Irish (Dublin) English' (English World-Wide, 2019), 'Language Attitudes in Australia: Results from a Nationwide Survey' (Languages, 2024), and 'New speakers in the Irish context: Heritage language maintenance among multilingual migrants in Dublin, Ireland' (Frontiers in Education, 2020). She contributes to public understanding of language through Pursuit articles on teenage linguistic innovations, vocal fry, and the evolution of discourse markers like 'like'. Diskin-Holdaway serves as a guest editor for special issues and participates in projects such as the Little Multilingual Minds program promoting heritage language learning in preschools.