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Socio Lab goes to New York City for NWAV 51

October 16, 2023
Adam Barnhardt stands behind a podium. A screen on the wall displays a slide titled "Primary research question." Below are two bullets. The first: "Do early adolescents vary pronunciation of an ongoing sound change when performing age-related stance (child vs teen)? Second: "Previously pursued using small number of speakers in CA looking at GOAT-fronting (Eckert 2011)"
Adam Barnhardt presents “Not all sound changes in progress are used in early-adolescent stance-taking”
Suzanne Wagner and Jack Rechsteiner stand in front of the Wagner, Sneller & Rechsteiner poster at NWAV 51.
Suzanne Wagner and Jack Rechsteiner in front of Wagner, Sneller & Rechsteiner’s poster “Sociolinguistic research projects as brands” at NWAV 51.
Betsy Sneller stands behind a podium, pointing to a slide titled "MI English vowel changes" with a diagram of the Northern Cities Shift.
Betsy Sneller points to a diagram of the Northern Cities shift.
Head and shoulders group photo of Monica Nesbitt, Suzanne Wagner, Betsy Sneller, Yongqing Ye, Adam Barnhardt, and Shannon Harasta.
Monica Nesbitt, Suzanne Wagner, Betsy Sneller, Yongqing Ye, Adam Barnhardt, and Shannon Harasta at NWAV 51.

The MSU Sociolinguistics Lab was well represented at the NWAV 51 conference at Queens College, New York, October 13-15, 2023. We had presentations on some of our first analyses of linguistic data from the MI Diaries project: Dr. Betsy Sneller presented as first author on a talk about Michigan English vowel change in apparent time, and Linguistics PhD students Adam Barnhardt and Yongqing Ye presented their doctoral qualifying paper research on adolescent stance-taking and vowel nasalization respectively. In addition, we had a poster that described our experience of building the MI Diaries ‘brand’ over the last three years. We were pleased to include new first year Second Language Studies student Shannon Harasta, who presented her MA thesis research (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) on queer individuals’ sense of (dis)comfort with various audiences. And it would not be NWAV without a gathering of MSU Socio Lab alumni and associates, such as Dr. Monica Nesbitt (U Indiana Bloomington), Jack Rechsteiner (U Pittsburgh), Chun-Yi Peng (Borough of Manhattan Community College) and Jayce Garner (Pomona College and MI Diaries NSF-REU 2022).

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Monica Nesbitt, Suzanne Wagner, Betsy Sneller, Yongqing Ye, Adam Barnhardt, and Shannon Harasta at NWAV 51.
Conferences / Faculty / Graduate Students

Paper on nonbinary speech accepted to ICPHs

May 5, 2023

Jack Rechsteiner (Linguistics M.A.) and Betsy Sneller recently had a paper accepted to ICPhS (International Congress of Phonetic Sciences) for a poster presentation. The paper is titled “The impact of social information on VOT shadowing by nonbinary speakers”. The conference will be hosted in Prague, Czech Republic on August 7-11, 2023.

Congratulations, Jack and Betsy!

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Conferences / Undergraduates

Undergraduate Sociolinguists present at MSU undergraduate conference UURAF

April 23, 2023

On April 14th, undergraduate Sociolinguistics Lab members Caroline Zackerman, Whitney Kuta, Mikayla Thompson, Newt Kelbley and Zach Sebree presented their posters at the 2023 Michigan State University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF). Our presenters discussed their projects with a general audience, interacted with visitors, and answered questions about their research. Congratulations to our UURAF presenters!

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Conferences / Events / Faculty / Graduate Students / People / Research

MSU represented at NWAV 49

October 18, 2021

For the first time, the New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference is being held online. Hosted by the University of Texas at Austin, NWAV 49 talks are available as pre-recorded videos to registered participants, and live Q&A sessions are happening this week, October 19 – 24, 2021.

MSU will, as always, be pretty well represented! Here’s the list of current and former MSU faculty and students who will be presenting this year:

  • Adam Barnhardt. I didn’t go to college with anyone that country: Age-stratified indexicality of Southern-shifted vowels.
  • Jack Rechsteiner and Betsy Sneller. Non-binary speakers’ use of (ING) across gender-related topics.
  • Denise Troutman. Throwing shade: Signifyin(g) and synchronic change among Ebonics speakers.
  • Mingzhe Zheng. One-ge person or One-wei person: Exploring the use of Mandarin classifier across time.
  • Dennis Preston. Women are hens: A taxonomic exercise in historical gender-based metaphor.
  • Rebecca Roeder. PALM and the low-back merger shift: Evidence from Victoria, BC.
  • Marisa Brook. Language shift in a microcosm: Finnish-English bilingualism, contact, and substrate effects in Sointula, British Columbia.

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