Mendoza-Denton earned a doctorate in linguistics from Stanford University in 1997 with the completion of her dissertation, Chicana/Mexicana Identity and Linguistic Variation: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of Gang Affiliation in an Urban High School.[4][5] She worked as an assistant professor at Ohio State University and at the University of Arizona before taking up a position at UCLA.[2]
Her ethnographic and sociolinguistic analyses of Latinagang members in California are presented in her book Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice Among Latina Youth Gangs.[6] Mendoza-Denton was a consultant for the Do You Speak American? television program.[7] In 2020, she published a collection of essays, co-edited with linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh, examining the politics of language during the Trump presidency.[8]
In 2011 she received a National Institute for Civil Discourse grant for her work analyzing the ways in which politicians handle disagreements with their constituents.[12]
Publications and collaborations
Mendoza-Denton, Norma and Scarlett Eisenhauer, Wesley Wilson, Cory Flores. 2017. Embodied Entanglements: Electrodermal Activity, Interaction, and Videogames. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21(4), 547-575.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2017. Bad Hombres: Images of Masculinity and Historical Consciousness of U.S./Mexico Relations in the Age of Trump. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(1), 423-432.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2015. Sociopolitical Resources and Youth Movements. (1st author, with Aomar Boum). Annual Review of Anthropology 44, 295-310.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2011d. The Multiple Voices of Jane Hill. (2nd author, with Jennifer Roth-Gordon). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(2), 157-165.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2011c. The Semiotic Hitchhiker’s Guide to Creaky Voice: Circulation and Gendered Hardcore in a Chicana/o Gang Persona. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(2), 260-278.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2011b. Special Issue of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology on the Work of Jane Hill. Co-edited with Jennifer Roth-Gordon.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2011b. Semiotic Layering Through Gesture and Intonation: A Case Study of Complementary and Supplementary Multimodality in Political Speech. (1st author, with Stefanie Jannedy) Journal of English Linguistics 39(3), 265 - 299.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice Among Latina Youth Gangs. Wiley-Blackwell.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2007. Sociolinguistic extensions of exemplar theory. In J. Cole and J. Hualde (eds.) Laboratory Phonology 9. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Jannedy, Stefanie and Norma Mendoza-Denton. 2006. Structuring information through gesture and intonation. Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 3, 199-244.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2004. The anguish of normative gender. In M. Bucholtz (ed.), Language and Woman's Place II: Text and Commentaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2001. Style. In A. Duranti (ed.), Key Terms in Language and Culture. London: Blackwell.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 1996. "Muy macha": Gender and ideology in gang girls' discourse about makeup. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 6, 47-63.