Penelope Brown is an American anthropological linguist who has studied a number of aspects of cross-linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cross-cultural studies of language and cognition. She was the co-developer of the theory ofpoliteness, a key topic in 20th century sociolinguistics, which was first published in 1978 that she co-authored and with her research collaborator and husband, linguist Stephen Levinson. Brown earned a BA in Psychology from Carleton College 1965 and an M.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics from the University of Iowa in 1970. She earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979 under the supervision of John J. Gumperz. She earned the Stirling Prize for Best Work in Psychological Anthropology in 1992. Brown worked in the field for a number of years with Tzeltel Maya speakers in Mexico, and has also worked in Rossel Island in Papua New Guinea. She is currently an emeritus member of the Language Acquisition Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.
Key publications
Tanya Stivers, N.J. Enfield, Penolpe Brown, Christina Englert, Makoto Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoymann, Federico Rossano, Jan Peter de Ruiter, Kyung-Eun Yoon. and Stephen C. Levinson. 2009. Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Melissa Bowerman and Penelope Brown 2008. Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure. Taylor and Francis.
Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Penelope Brown. 1980. How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. Women and language in literature and society. Preager Publishers. pp. 111–136.
Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson. 1978. Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–311.
Gillian Sankoff and Penelope Brown. 1976. The origins of syntax in discourse: A case study of Tok Pisin relatives. Language,52:3 pp. 631–666.
