Ai Taniguchi

Professor Ai Taniguchi is a linguist specializing in formal semantics, formal pragmatics, linguistics pedagogy, and public linguistics. In semantics and pragmatics, her expertise is in non-at-issue meaning, social meaning, and dynamic semantics: she is interested in what different kinds of meaning exist in language beyond literal, at-issue meanings and how they can be formally modelled. As Teaching Stream faculty, her expertise is in public outreach and public communication in linguistics. She is also an artist, and uses comics and other forms of visual art to communicate linguistics to the public in accessible and informative ways.

Current Courses

Summer 2025:

• LIN204 (English Grammar I)

Fall/Winter 2025–26:

• LIN205 (English Grammar II)
• LIN337 (Lexical Semantics: What is (or is not) in a Word?)
• LIN338 (Pragmatics)
• LIN352 (English Language Linguistics in the Public Sphere)
• LIN452 (Communicating English Language Linguistics)

Education

• PhD, Linguistics, Michigan State University
• MA, Linguistics (by examination), Michigan State University
• BA (Highest Honours), Linguistics and French, University of Georgia 

Areas of Teaching and Research Interests

• Public linguistics
• Graphic linguistics (use of comics for linguistics communication)
• Innovative online teaching
• Linguistics pedagogy and EDID
• Community participatory research
• Formal semantics/pragmatics 

Selected Publications

• Anderson, Catherine, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi. Essentials of Linguistics. 2nd edition. Toronto: eCampusOntario, 2022.

Selected Grants, Fellowships and Awards

• University of Toronto International Student Experience Fund, Principal Investigator, 2022–2023, Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment (L’IMAGE)
• eCampusOntario Virtual Learning Strategy (Digital Content grant MCMA-862), Co-investigator, 2021–2022, Essentials of Linguistics, second edition