I am a communication scholar who earned a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Communication. My work is influenced by the American pragmatists, most notably John Dewey. I am particularly interested in culture and how people through their talk socially construct their worlds. My work rests on the belief that reality is a given, but its meaning is open to many interpretations. I explore an often overlooked idea of the importance of the feeling/emotion in telling us when life has a fit and how things come together to give our lives meaning.

Numerous articles, chapters, and journals published internationally.

Talking Acadian
TALKING ACADIAN: Communication, Work and Culture provides a look into the lives of the French-speaking American Acadians, and particularly those who left eastern Canada to settle in Massachusetts in the 1960s. This book captures their stories about family life and their values, morés and morals. It also traces the ways that they use communication to develop and maintain their culture. What the reader learns is that to talk about Acadians you must talk about work. This group gives us new insights into the world of work -- a central feature of living for the Acadians and crucial to their self-definition. There are few sources about this culture and their experiences in the United States. This book makes contributions to communication studies, more specifically the Coordinated Management Meaning by analyzing the situated interactions of this community, demonstrating the capacity of communication to transmit the rules and grammar of a culture, and highlighting Cronen's consequentiality of communication.