People – Sociolinguistics Lab

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. — Adam Barnhardt presents “Not all sound changes in progress are used in early-adolescent stance-taking”

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.

Events / Faculty / Graduate Students / Undergraduates

Grandparents University 2023

September 27, 2023

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. This past summer, MSU Sociolinguistics led two courses.

As usual, we ran Harry Potter and the Secrets of British English, which has been a hit at Grandparents University since 2009! In this session, participants are whisked off to Hogwarts for classes in Potions (British/US English madlibs), Charms (IPA transcription), Defense Against the Dark Arts (British regional accents) and History of Magic (a brief lecture on language change).

And we had a new course: Diary of a Michigan Kid. In this class, we taught participants about keeping an audio diary, pronunciation differences, and generational differences in language. All of the activities and materials were co-designed by faculty and students on the lab’s MI Diaries project team. We think that the “Kids vs Grands” activity was the most fun. See below for some pictures from Diary of a Michigan Kid.

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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!

Events / Faculty

Betsy joins panel discussion on COVID-era research

April 26, 2023

On April 11th, 2023, Dr. Betsy Sneller, co-director of the Sociolinguistics Lab and MI Diaries project lead, gave a talk as one of the panelists for the Honors College public series, Sharper Focus/Wider Lens. The talk is titled “COVID: Looking Back, Looking Forward”. She was joined by other panelists discussing research developed during COVID-19. Betsy’s talk discussed how MI Diaries grew as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

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!