Kendra Calhoun, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is a linguistic anthropologist and sociocultural linguist and she takes a critical qualitative approach to the study of language as a social process.
In Calhoun's work on social media, she explores how digital technologies create possibilities for novel forms of discourse, and how these practices are inextricably connected to "offline" identities, cultures, and ideologies. Calhoun's work on Black social media networks examines how Black digital discourse practices in the U.S. are grounded in African American language practices, racial ideologies, and political histories while embedded in a global, diasporic Black digital community and influenced by ephemeral trends of the digital age. Her current work examines 'Black TikTok' as a digital community and site of raciolinguistic construction/contestation.