Elin McCready

Academic career McCready earned a PhD at the University of Texas-Austin in 2005, with a dissertation entitled "The dynamics of particles".

McCready has written widely cited articles published in prestigious journals including Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Linguistic Inquiry, Linguistics and Philosophy, Semantics and Pragmatics, and Journal of Cognitive Science. She has written two books, Reliability in Pragmatics and The Semantics and Pragmatics of Honorification: Register and Social Meaning, and has (co-)edited numerous volumes, including Formal Approaches to Semantics and Pragmatics: Japanese and Beyond.

In 2021, she received a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, which supports researchers who "are expected to produce cutting-edge activities".

Gender recognition in Japan

McCready is a trans woman. As a result, McCready and her wife have filed suit against the Japanese government. A documentary, It's Just Our Family, has been produced about the couple's struggles with this treatment.

In 2019 McCready organised a trans inclusive club night, called WAIFU, after being refused entry to an existing women's club night.

Selected publications

McCready, Elin. 2015. Reliability in Pragmatics. Oxford. ISBN 0198702841 McCready, Elin. 2005. The dynamics of particles. PhD dissertation, University of Texas. McCready, Elin. 2019. The Semantics and Pragmatics of Honorification: Register and Social Meaning. Oxford. ISBN 0198821360. McCready, Elin; Yabushita, Katsuhiko; Yoshimoto, Kei, eds. 2014. Formal Approaches to Semantics and Pragmatics: Japanese and Beyond. Dordrecht: Springer. ISBN 9789401788137