Associate Professor
Contact Information
PDL B-421
Office Hours
TTh 3:30-4:30, or by appointment
Biography
B.A., The University of Texas at Austin, 1996
M.A., The University of Michigan, 2000
Ph.D., The University of Michigan, 2004
Areas of Specialization
English language studies, history of the English language, late medieval literature
Activities and Interests
I am interested, most broadly, in the ways that speakers and writers have used and shaped the English language to meet their changing needs. My research is based in the history of the English language, and uses methodology from historical pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and stylistics. My 2011 book, Quoting Speech in Early English, joins linguistic and literary studies to investigate methods of marking reported speech in late medieval English. I am currently researching the intersection of linguistic and scribal strategies for textual organization in late Middle English devotional texts. Other research and teaching interests include language ideologies, language and community, corpus linguistics, language and gender, the changing linguistic landscape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Middle English language and literature.
Research
Selected Research
- Colette Moore. 2025. "Congregation or coven: talking about civic assembly in Middle English." Language, Linguistics, and Middle English Literature: essays in honor of Karla Taylor. Elizabeth Allen and Catherine Sanok, eds. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
- Colette Moore. 2025. “Conventionalising strategies of verbal and visual information.” Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English. Matti Peikola, Jukka Tyrkkö, Mari-Liisa Varila, eds. Turnhout: Brepols. 25-46.
- Colette Moore. 2021. review: Transforming Early English: the Reinvention of Early English and Older Scots Jeremy Smith. For Speculum 96:4. 1231-2.
- Colette Moore. 2021. "Before quotation marks: parentheses as punctuation of represented speech in early print." Speech Representation in the History of English. Peter Grund and Terry Walker, eds. Oxford University Press. 29-50.
- Colette Moore. 2021. "Before quotation marks: parentheses as punctuation of represented speech in early print." Speech Representation in the History of English. Peter Grund and Terry Walker, eds. Oxford University Press. 29-50.
- Colette Moore. 2020. "Paratext, information studies, and Middle English manuscripts." The Dynamics of Text and Framing Phenomena: Historical approaches to paratext and metadiscourse in English. Matti Peikola and Birte Bös, eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 289-309.
- Colette Moore. 2020. "Information design and information structure in the Middle English prose Brut." In Message and Medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media. Caroline Tagg and Mel Evans, eds. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 261-280.
- Colette Moore. 2019. "The path not taken: parentheses and written direct speech in Early Modern printed books." Punctuation in Context –Past and Present Perspectives. Merja Kytö and Claudia Claridge, eds. Bern: Peter Lang. 85-101.
- Colette Moore and Chris C. Palmer, eds. 2019. Teaching the History of the English Language. MLA Options in Teaching series. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
- Colette Moore. 2019. "Communities of Practice and Incipient Standardization in Middle English Written Culture." English Studies 100:2. 117-132.
- Colette Moore. 2017. "Discourse variation, mise-en-page, and textual organisation in Middle English saints' lives." In Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts. Matti Peikola, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila, and Janne Skaffari, eds. Turnhout: Brepols.
- Colette Moore. 2017. "So moche ye owe me": speech-like representation in Caxton's Dialogues in French and English. Nordic Journal of English Studies 16:1. 171-189.
- Don Chapman, Colette Moore, and Miranda Wilcox, eds. 2016. Studies in the History of the English Language VII: Generalizing vs. particularizing methodologies in historical linguistic analysis. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, Topics in English Linguistics.
- Colette Moore. 2016. "Everyday English in late medieval England." In Imagining Medieval English. Tim William Machan, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Colette Moore. 2016. “Visual pragmatics: Speech presentation and Middle English manuscripts.” In Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics. Merja Kytö and Päivi Pahta, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Colette Moore. 2015. “Talking about talk: quethen, quoth, quote.” In Quoting Now and Then. Jenny Arendholz, Wolfram Bublitz and Monika Kirner, eds. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
- Colette Moore. 2014. “A history of the English term onomatopoeia.” In Studies in the History of the English Language VI. Michael Adams, Rob Fulk, and Laurel Brinton, eds. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Colette Moore. 2013. Testifying to Language and Life in Early Modern England. For English Studies 94:5. 624-625.
- Colette Moore. 2012. “Early Modern English: Literary Language.” In Historical Linguistics of English. vol. 1. Alexander Bergs and Laurel Brinton, eds. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 791-807.
- Colette Moore. 2011. “History of the English Language in the English Department: Past and present.” In Contours of English. Anne Curzan and Michael Adams, eds. University of Michigan Press. 157-167.
- Colette Moore. 2011. Quoting Speech in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Colette Moore, Richard W. Bailey, and Marilyn Miller, eds. 2006. A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550–1563, by Henry Machyn: Manuscript, Transcription, and Modernization. University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan University Library. Electronic edition.
Courses Taught
Winter 2026
Autumn 2025
Winter 2025
Spring 2024
Winter 2024
Autumn 2023
Spring 2023
Winter 2023
Autumn 2022
Spring 2022
Winter 2022
Autumn 2021
Spring 2021
Winter 2021
Additional Courses
Winter 2019
Honors 211D: Invented Languages: From Elvish to Dothraki
Affiliations
Home Department