Dawn Bates joined the ASU English faculty in linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in the fall of 1989. ASU was her first permanent faculty position; she had taught for two years in the department of linguistics at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, British Columbia after receiving her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1988.

Bates teaches undergraduate courses in English linguistics, grammar, usage, pronunciation, and etymology (history of words). She has a large collection of usage handbooks and she delights in pointing out grammar points on which various experts disagree. “Style in language is much like style in fashion: It’s good to notice the popular patterns, and it is also good break the rules in expressing one’s individuality.”

Several of ASU’s graduate programs involve linguistics, and Bates is active in the English Department’s Master of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, as well as the MA and PhD in English with concentration in linguistics. Students from the College of Education and the School of International Letters and Cultures take her classes, as do students in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Applied Linguistics.

As chair of the Interdisciplinary Committee on Linguistics, Bates helps to coordinate ASU’s various graduate programs related to linguistics. The Interdisciplinary Committee on Linguistics is located in the Department of English and its members hail from many departments, from Speech and Hearing Science to Curriculum and Instruction.

During her training in theoretical linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Bates developed an interest in the Native languages of the Pacific Northwest. She collaborated with, and learned a great deal from, native speakers of languages from the Salish (pronounced SAIL-ish) language family. At the time of Anglo European contact, there were 22 Salish languages, spoken by diverse tribes occupying a territory that included what is now Washington State, northern Oregon, Southern British Columbia, northern Idaho, and western Montana. All of these languages, and their diverse traditional cultures, have suffered greatly from the encroachment of English speakers into this territory. Several of the documented Salish languages now lack any speakers to carry on their traditions; several others, however, have been the subject of heroic preservation efforts by Native communities.

In 1994, Bates edited a bilingual dictionary of Lushootseed (pronounced luh-SHOOT-seed) Salish, compiled in collaboration with native speaker Violet taqwsblu (pronounced TALK-sh-blue) Hilbert, an elder of the Upper Skagit (rhymes with gadget) tribe, just north of Seattle, and professor Thom Hess of the University of Victoria. The dictionary is used by several tribal programs that work to preserve Lushootseed language and culture. These preservation efforts include community-based Lushootseed schools and programs to encourage Native heritage storytelling, both in the language and in English translation.