College of Arts and Letters Alumni Reunion
On November 11, 2020, students and faculty from the Socio Lab’s MI Diaries project talked to alumni of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. PI Dr. Betsy Sneller described the research goals of the project. Students Alexis Furkioti, Jack Rechsteiner, Lindsay Moore and Yongqing Ye explained how they manage the project’s social media presence, create interesting question prompts, select the weekly featured diarist stories, and use acoustic software. Co-PI Dr. Suzanne Evans Wagner joined the group for a Q&A with alumni after the presentation. We’re grateful to the former faculty, staff and students who attended our talk, and who asked great questions! Thanks as well to the CAL Development team headed by Christine Radtke.
To support faculty and student research in the Sociolinguistics Lab, you can donate to the MSU Linguistics program’s gift fund.
Grandparents University
MSU Grandparents University is an opportunity for grandparents and grandchildren (ages 8-12) to come together for a three-day educational experience while spending time together on the MSU campus in the summer. MSU Sociolinguistics has offered Harry Potter and the Secrets of British English since 2014, and it has frequently been voted one of the top 10 sessions by participants!
Contact Dr Suzanne Wagner if you’re interested in helping out in 2021. There will be two sessions of about 90 minutes. You can volunteer for one or both sessions. Assistants do everything from helping participants learn their ‘magic runes’ (International Phonetic Alphabet) to placing the Sorting Hat on children’s heads! It’s a lot of fun, so consider helping us to bring linguistics to a new audience.
Linguistics and Languages Alumni Reunion
MSU sociolinguists participated in the 2016 alumni reunion event on April 9. We were represented in the morning session by Chenchen Xu, who gave a 5-minute talk about Chinese dialects and how to map people’s perceptions of them. In the afternoon, Suzanne Wagner, Mingzhe Zheng, Alex Mason and Bethany Dickerson gave a tour of the Sociolinguistics Lab. We invited people to take part in some recording sessions and other activities.