Brandon Waldon

My research examines how context, linguistic structure, and social cognition jointly enable linguistic communication. Some of my interests within semantic & pragmatic theory include: modality, linguistic vagueness/imprecision, and conversational implicature.

I’m also interested in legal interpretation: my work employs linguistic theory, experimentation, and computational methods to help lawyers, judges, and the public navigate hard problems of legal textual analysis.

I’m thrilled to be joining the University of South Carolina’s Linguistics Program and Department of Philosophy as an assistant professor starting August 2025.

Currently, I’m a postdoc in Computer Science and Linguistics at Georgetown, where I’m affiliated with Nathan Schneider’s NERT lab, Computational Linguistics @ Georgetown (GUCL), and the Massive Data Institute at the McCourt School of Public Policy. For the 2024-25 academic year, I am a Fritz Fellow in Georgetown’s Tech & Society Initiative.

I received my PhD in Linguistics at Stanford, where I was advised by Cleo Condoravdi and Judith Degen. Before Stanford, I was a Fulbright scholar at Leibniz-ZAS Berlin and a BA student at UChicago.

Preferred pronouns: he/him/his