About

My name is Jeremy Johns. I am from the Ak-Chin Indian Community (Tohono ’O’odham/’Akimel ’O’odham) and am currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University. My research focuses on the theoretical aspects of linguistics as it pertains to the phonology and semantics of reduplicative morphology in the O’odham language. O’odham, a Uto-Aztecan language native to the Sonoran desert, is an endangered language currently experiencing revitalization efforts. As a result, my research also looks at ways in which the field of academic linguistics interacts with speaker communities and the positive and negative outcomes of the Academia-Speaker Community interface. As a heritage speaker of O’odham raised in an O’odham community, my positionality as both a community member and academic researcher affords me unique opportunities that allow me to probe community level linguistic issues from an Indigenous point of view. I have also been involved in many revitalization efforts in my language in my community, such as the development of Arizona state board recognized language certification exams allowing O’odham speakers to teach language in public schools. Most recently, I supervised an initiative to document language with the assistance of a panel of community-based language teachers and elder language speakers serving as language experts. This initiative resulted in the publication of a community dictionary for distribution to homes within the community. As such, I am very interested in researching aspects of language documentation and ways in which documentation can serve speaker communities in language revitalization and maintenance. 

I have also served as an O’odham language instructor for Tohono O’odham Community College in Sells, AZ on the Tohono O’odham Nation. Originally hired to design the college’s first virtual language courses, I have taken over the teaching of these virtual language courses since 2017 and offer classes from Elementary to Advanced levels. This has allowed me to gain a wealth of teaching experience and has allowed me to be at the front lines of language acquisition in a digital realm.