Dallin D. Oaks

Dallin Dixon Oaks is a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University (BYU). He specializes in English linguistics.

Oaks earned a BA in English teaching from BYU in 1984. From 1985 to 1987 Oaks was a teacher of English as a second language at Kaysville Junior High School and Davis High School in Davis County, Utah. At the same time he earned an MA from the University of Utah. He then continued his studies to earn a Ph.D. from Purdue University.

He is the author of three books: Linguistics at Work: A Reader of Applications, An Introductory English Grammar with Norman C. Stageberg, and Structural Ambiguity in English: An Applied Grammatical Inventory (2 vols.). The second of these works An Instoductory English Grammar was the fifthed edition of the textbook, with Oaks revising it into its fifthed edition from an earlier work by Stageberg. Oaks has done much of his research in the area of structural ambiguity. His book on structural ambiguity shows how an understanding of the grammatical features of the English language can be helpful in generating structural word plays that are found in advertising and humor.

Oaks is a son of Dallin H. Oaks. Oaks is a Latter-day Saint.