True Grit: Language Studies professor's tenacious spirit helps her hit her mark in the field of sociolinguistics research

Katherine Rehner has always had a bit of an unconventional approach, even as a child when she discovered that her natural affinity for language provided the perfect sortie for her occasional behavioural transgressions.

The associate professor in the Department of Language Studies recounts a time when, at about the age of five, her mother told her she did not want her playing in a certain friend’s house. “Okay, she didn’t say ‘at,’ she said ‘in’ her house. And I remember being fascinated by the fact that she said ‘in,’ if she meant ‘at,’” says Rehner, who was looking for a loophole in order to subvert her mother’s instructions and play on the friend’s front lawn. “I have always been interested in why people say things the way they do, and what makes them chose to say them that way.”

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