Penelope Brown

Penelope Brown is an American-born linguistic anthropologist who has done extensive research on the relationship between language, culture, and cognition. She is currently a leading scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands.

Penelope Brown was born in 1944 in Summit, New Jersey. At an early age he discovered his love for language. When he was about 15 years old, he wrote an essay on the history of the English language. Despite her great attraction to language studies, Penelope decided to study an undergraduate degree in Psychology and later pursued a master's degree in Anthropology and Linguistics. And finally, Penelope would do a doctorate in the department of Anthropology carrying out her thesis entitled: “Language, interaction and sexual roles in a Mayan community: a study on the courtesy and position of women”. During his graduate studies, he became interested in linguistics, especially thanks to a trip he made to southern Mexico where he was in contact with the Tenejapa community and its Tzeltal language. Throughout her stay in Mexico, Penelope studied the use of the language in a specific sociocultural context. In addition, together with Stephen Levinson he developed the theory of courtesy, one of his most recognized works. His focus of study has changed over time. At first, Penelope mainly studied how adults communicated with each other; however, he also investigated how children learn the same rules of communication. Several researchers inspired her in her work, including John Gumperz and Melissa Bowerman. Unfortunately, Penelope faced some trouble in academia finding job stability, which is why she moved to England. However, luck did not change for her because she was not hired as a foreigner. Eventually, she joined the Max Planck Institute in the 1990s where about 50% of the people who worked there were women.