One Iowa State professor has dealt with students from many cultures — from those who eat their tests to those who share cleaning facilities with pigs. She has not only taught them, but has also learned from them.

Susan Conrad, an assistant professor of linguistics and English, studies sociolinguistics, which examines the use of language “in relation to social relationships or in aspects of society.”

Conrad studies how language and mannerisms are used in different cultures and in social, textual and situational contexts.

She said sociolinguistics is an important area of study because it affects everyone’s lives.

“It happens all the time, in everything you do, even if you’re unaware of it,” Conrad said.

She said people alter their language structures to fit varying situations. A good example, Conrad said, is the difference between writing a letter of recommendation and writing a letter to a friend.

In a speech she gave on Oct. 16 for the Society for Technical Communication, Conrad touched on how language is used in academic disciplines.

She noted that altering writing styles for different professors can be difficult for students.

“Language structures are used very differently,” she said. “Students have a lot to get a grasp on when they start to read and write for a class. It’s a tricky thing … a lot to ask of them.”

Conrad, who has taught English in both southern Africa and Korea, said she has recognized remarkable distinctions between students from different cultures.

In particular, she said, the work ethic of students in southern Africa and Korea is more intense than that of most students in the United States.

Conrad said she learned overseas that cultures use different systems of language, and words and actions which seem appropriate in one society may not be acceptable in another.

She said while teaching abroad, her opinions sometimes clashed with those of her students.

“People think in different ways,” she said. “When you actually live in [an unfamiliar] culture, people do things you think aren’t healthy.”

Conrad said when she returned test papers to one southern Africa class, her students ate them.

“I never figured that out. It’s unexpected things like that which make it fun, though,” she said. “Living in Africa … people do inexplicable things,” she said. “It makes life interesting.”

She said her southern Africa students also washed their clothes in a river primarily used by pigs, ignoring her concerns about health and sanitation.

“I had scientific information backing me up, but they weren’t impressed,” she said. “It’s how much can you accept people doing this versus what you think should change.”

In addition to teaching for the English and linguistics departments, Conrad currently is co-authoring two books. “Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use” is a textbook about using computers to analyze language variation, and “The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English” is a descriptive book about the English language which “analyzes what people do, not what they should do,” she said.

Conrad said working on the books not only has introduced her to the scholarly views of her co-authors, but also has expanded her knowledge of sociolinguistics.

“Both books fit into sociolinguistic endeavors,” she said. “Working on them, I could see … everything we do gets down to sociolinguistics.”