Lab member Connor Mason wins First Place UURAF Award

Connor Mason, an undergraduate Sociolinguistics Lab member and Professorial Assistant for the MI Diaries project, won first place in the Linguistics, Languages, and Speech category at MSU's 2026 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Fair (UURAF). The project focused on the usage of 'lowkey' in contemporary American English, incorporating data from the MI Diaries corpus to track changes in apparent time regarding the grammatical distribution of 'lowkey'. Connor was advised by Dr. Suzanne Wagner and Dr. Betsy Sneller. Congratulations, Connor! Read more on the College of Arts and Letters website here.

Continue ReadingLab member Connor Mason wins First Place UURAF Award

Honors Students Present Sociolinguistic Research at UURAF

Over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year, Dr. Betsy Sneller and Dr. Suzanne Wagner led an Honors Research Seminar on the MI Diaries project for Honors undergraduate students at Michigan State. During this time, students of the seminar designed and executed original sociolinguistic research projects and presented their findings in poster format at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum in April 2026 (read more about UURAF and the linguistics and languages students who presented). Congratulations, Honors Seminar members! Lab member Lin Cabada also presented an independent research project that grew from an Honors Option paper they completed for Dr. Wagner's Language and Gender class in Fall 2025. Here's a list of the presenters and their poster titles: Mary Cavagnetto and Elle Jacobson / How do people talk about accents in Michigan’s Thumb and UP? / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Chae Eun Park and Keira Wesley / Social perceptions of uh vs. um / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Rachel Ross / “So, uhm, yeah”: A case study of uhm development between 5-9 years old / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Lily Kwon and Bai Yang Clemens / Is “low-key” going low-key adverbial? / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller Connor Mason / A lowkey examination of lowkey in the MI Diaries corpus / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller (with assistance from Adam Barnhardt) Allison Phillips, Antony Tokrri, Jad Assaf / “Pretty” is pretty cool / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller (with assistance from Annan Kirk) Lin Cabada / Gender-marked occupational terms at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum / Suzanne Wagner Allison Phillips, Antony Tokrri, and Jad Assaf Bai Yang Clemens and Lily Kwon Mary Cavagnetto and Elle Jacobson Lin Cabada Connor Mason Keira Wesley Rachel Ross

Continue ReadingHonors Students Present Sociolinguistic Research at UURAF

This Year’s Strides and Goodbyes in the Socio Lab

This academic year saw remarkable growth for the Sociolinguistics Lab. In addition to a new cohort of students, we welcomed a new affiliate professor, Dr. Rose Fisher, who studies (socio)linguistics and language attitudes in Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking communities, as well as two new postdoctoral scholars, Dr. Leah Nodar and Dr. Joel Berends, who work with the lab's MI Diaries project. We heard a total of 18 sociolinguistics presentations from grad students and faculty at lab meetings this year, on topics ranging from morphological variation in Swahili to the changing usage of English intensifiers, and seemingly everything in between. Lab members shared their findings with broader communities of linguists at the NWAV, ISLE, LSA, and SECOL conferences. Sociolinguistically-inclined undergraduates had a rewarding year, too -- after conducting original research based on data from the MI Diaries, six students presented their findings at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Fair (UURAF), with freshman Connor Mason winning a first-place award in the fair's Linguistics, Languages, and Speech category! This time of year also comes with the bittersweet necessity that some lab members will be moving on from MSU. Hamlin Teng, who successfully defended his Master's thesis investigating the phonetics of Mandarin tones in whispered speech across differing communicative contexts, will be starting his linguistics PhD next year at Stony Brook University! We're also preparing to work up the strength to say farewell to longtime lab member Adam Barnhardt, who's currently finishing his dissertation on how the meanings of linguistic variants interact with the development of idiolects and the propagation of sound changes. Thank you to all who contributed to the lab this year. Here's to the continuation of great work on all facets of language variation!

Continue ReadingThis Year’s Strides and Goodbyes in the Socio Lab

MI Diaries at MSU Science Fest 2026

On April 11th, the Sociolinguistics Lab's Michigan Diaries Project set up at MSU's annual Science Festival to talk to the public about sociolinguistics! In addition to answering people's questions about language and hyping them up to become participants for the Diaries project, we ran two informal studies throughout the day to gauge changes in time in Michiganders' preferred terms for a fizzy drink (pop, soda, or other), as well as the realization of Michiganders' pre-nasal /æ/ vowel (is the vowel in 'hand' the same as the one in 'cap'?) Professor Betsy Sneller helping visitors add to the Pop vs. Soda chart. Team member Connor Bechler giving the MI Diaries rundown to a curious prospective participant. Rush hour at the MI Diaries Science Fest booth.

Continue ReadingMI Diaries at MSU Science Fest 2026

Michigan State Presenting at LSA 2026

Five MSU linguists (including Sociolinguistics Lab members Mofart Ayiega & Leah Nodar) will be presenting their work at the Linguistics Society of America’s annual conference, taking place this year in New Orleans from January 8th – 11th!

Please find their talk titles below:

  • Mofart Ayiega (co-authored with Dr. Suzanne Wagner) – Morphological Leveling of Noun Class Agreement in Urban Swahili
  • Dr. Leah Nodar – Twelve Variables of Africatown English in 1927 and 1979
  • Jingying Xu (co-authored with Dr. Cristina Schmitt):
    • Beyond Truth Conditions: Context Modulates Telicity Interpretation
    • Learning Telicity in Context: Developmental Evidence from Mandarin Children
  • Ellie Xia (co-authored with Dr. Alan Hezao Ke) – Tonal Marking of Telicity in Hakka: An Agree-Based Analysis
  • John Ryan (co-authored with Yaxuan Wang) – Reference, Aspect, and Event Completion in Mandarin Sentence Judgments

Click ‘Continue Reading’ for abstracts.

(more…)

Continue ReadingMichigan State Presenting at LSA 2026