Allan is Emeritus Professor of Language and Communication at Auckland University of Technology as well as being affiliated to Laidlaw College. Before retiring from AUT in 2019, he was Director of the Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication. For many years he led a dual career combining academic research in sociolinguistics with journalism and communications consultancy.
His research interests include media language and discourse, the theory of language style, New Zealand English, multilingualism in New Zealand, performance language, language and identity, and social and linguistic aspects of the internet. He has led major research projects on these, and is Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Sociolinguistics, the leading journal in the field, which he co-founded in 1997 and edited until 2017.
At Laidlaw, Allan’s research is focusing on aspects of biblical language and discourse, including the languages of the Gospels and their tradition, and a re-evaluation of Babel as blessing not curse, and of Pentecost as a language event. He is a member of St Luke’s Anglican Parish, Mt Albert.