Professor Yamashita specializes in historical linguistics, Japanese linguistics, and language pedagogy. Her research interests include pragmatics, communication strategies, discourse analysis, and the language policies and national language of Japan.
Professor Yamashita is currently working on world English and Japanese languages. Her recent presentations include "Impact of the use of katakana words (English loan words) in contemporary Japanese fiction" at New England Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and "English words in Japanese: An analysis of shortening" at the Princeton Japanese Pedagogy workshop.
