She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and won the Dame Joan Metge Medal in 2012.

[2] She is now an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Topics she talked about included the way people communicate at work,[4] how complicated the phenomenon of sexist language is,[5] the pitfalls and possibilities of cross-cultural communication in the workplace,[6] or whether men or women talk more.

In the 2016 New Year Honours, Holmes was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to linguistics.

[10] In July 2019, Holmes was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Warwick.