“The article takes a look at how sociolinguists measure mergers in pronunciation (like when people pronounce “Don” and “Dawn” the same). We provide some suggestions for how to handle datasets of different sizes, including running through a small case study analyzing vowel mergers in conversational speech compared with a word list.”
Betsy Sneller
Continue ReadingPaper on Impact of Sample Sizes on Calculating Pillai Scores in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Jack received their B.A. in Linguistics at Michigan State University in 2021, and is currently a 2nd year MA student in the Linguistics program at MSU. Their research focuses primarily on sociophonetic variation in nonbinary speakers.
Jack’s interest lies in many fields — sociolinguistics, data analysis, and natural language processing. They are particularly passionate about understanding the inner workings of language and the interplay between language and society, as well as how insights into these topics can be applied to other areas.
Jack shared some thoughts on why they chose the program at University of Pittsburgh and their goals in the coming years:
I’m excited to study linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh because its linguistics department considers applied and descriptive methods to be equally important in examining the intersections of language, culture, and society. My research focuses on applying linguistic theory to identity and gender, and studying at the University of Pittsburgh would allow me to learn from linguists who have done great work on gender identity in language and the ways that social meanings become attached to linguistic variation. My goal is to become a researcher and professor who works to support a diverse range of backgrounds in academia while producing societally relevant research and communicating it with the community at large, and the University of Pittsburgh presents a great opportunity for pursuing that path.
In addition, Jack has also received a grant from the MSU Multilingual Lab to attend the Lavender Languages Institute this summer.
Congratulations, Jack!
Continue ReadingJack Rechsteiner accepted into the Linguistics PhD program at Pittsburgh University
Socio Lab member Mikayla Thompson (Linguistics major) has been accepted for a competitive NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) opportunity this summer.
Mikayla shared why she chose this program and her goals and hopes:
“This opportunity to study language revitalization methods at the University of Oregon stood out to me initially because of the particular nature of the classes and research. The focus on language revitalization processes in relation to my compiled knowledge of linguistics is exactly what I would like to do post-graduation. I intend to utilize the knowledge presented in these classes and fieldwork to better inform myself of methods of preserving and reviving Indigenous American languages. As a descendent of the Cherokee Nation, I know quite intimately the degree to which language repression and subsequent language endangerment has influenced Indigenous communities, and what it means for the future. I hope to apply what is learned at the University of Oregon to my own communities, so that I may more deeply familiarize myself with my ancestral language, Cherokee, and to eventually pass it down to others in my communities.”
Continue ReadingMikayla Thompson accepted for NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates
Newt is a Linguistics major investigating the syntax of sociolinguistic prompt questions in the MI Diaries project. Newt will start the one-year MA program in the fall of 2023. They shared why they want to study Forensic Linguistics at Cardiff University:
“I want to study there because it is one of the few places that have such a specific degree program, and I want to know more about the interface between language and law. I’m interested in this because this branch of linguistics is still growing and reaching its potential, and the applications seem unlimited. Mostly what’s appealing is what I’ve learned about the work of forensic linguists seeking to critically highlight problems in the judicial system, like comprehension challenges in jury texts, inadequate courtroom translations, or falsified written documents. Using research to inform and enhance the practice of law and make it fairer for the disadvantaged seems like a noble goal.”
Continue ReadingNewt Kelbley accepted into the Forensic Linguistics MA program at Cardiff University
We are delighted to announce that Dr. Betsy Sneller, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and co-Director of the Sociolinguistics Lab, was awarded a $99,908 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (DHAG) program. The new project, “Building and Disseminating an App for Ethnographic Remote Audio Recording”, is an innovative extension of the MI Diaries project. The goal is to provide other researchers with a convenient and accessible method of collecting speech data. In order to do that, Dr. Sneller’s team will develop an open-source code that anyone would be able to use to create a self-recording mobile app for their project.
The inspiration for the project came from the successful adaptation of the MI Diaries app for the study of Judaism through cultural arts led by Laura Yares, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at MSU, who will serve on the advisory council for the DHAG grant. Co-Director of the Sociolinguistics Lab, Dr. Suzanne Evans Wagner, is also a faculty advisor to the project.
We’re delighted to welcome Dr. Irina Zaykovskaya back to the MSU Sociolinguistics Lab as a Visiting Research Scholar!
Irina holds a Ph.D. in Second Language Studies from Michigan State University. Because her research interests lie at the intersection of second language acquisition and sociolinguistics, she was an active SocioLab member during her time at MSU, stayed in touch with the Lab after graduation, and even participated in the MI Diaries project in its early days as a Facebook page manager.
Irina’s dissertation project revolved around the acquisition of variation: specifically, the acquisition of discourse pragmatics by non-native speakers of English. Using a combination of interviews/surveys and experimental methods, Irina investigated how speakers from various L1 backgrounds use remarkable (vernacular) like, what beliefs about and attitudes towards it they possess, and whether they pattern with native speakers in judging the naturalness of like in different syntactic positions. Her most recent paper is to appear in Multifunctionality in English: Corpora, Language and Academic Literacy Pedagogy.
During her upcoming SocioLab sojourn, Irina is planning to continue her work on variation in the second language, join the MI Diaries project team, and hold regular office hours (online and offline) to offer help and mentorship to all sociolinguistics students.
Flyer for Yares and Sneller 2021 University Interdisciplinary Colloquium talk
Sociolinguistics Lab co-director Dr. Betsy Sneller will give a high-profile, university-wide talk on November 5th that is open to the public. Her co-presenter, Dr. Laura Yares, met Dr. Sneller at an informal College of Arts and Letters workshop in October 2020 about pivoting research to remote methods in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Yares and her collaborators were looking for a way to capture participants’ reactions to a popular Netflix show, Shtisel. Upon learning about the MI Diaries project’s mobile app for self-recorded audio entries, Dr. Yares met with Dr. Sneller and co-investigator Dr. Suzanne Wagner to talk about adapting it for her project. Come and hear about this serendipitous cross-disciplinary conversation, and its broader implications, courtesy of the MSU Center for Interdisciplinarity.
Abstract
Can common research technologies serve diverse disciplinary needs? Even disciplines that seem on the surface to have little in common can benefit from casual conversations about the challenges and methods that they might share. In this talk, we show how a simple smartphone app developed for a project analyzing language during the pandemic (MI Diaries) was successfully adapted for a Religious Studies project examining learning about Judaism through the cultural arts (Shtisel Diary). By reflecting on these two case-studies we highlight how the tools that we use to conduct research can be just as interdisciplinary as research projects themselves.
Sociolinguistics Lab co-director Suzanne Evans Wagner was featured in Michigan State University’s main news publication, MSU Today, at the end of May.
The story, “Understanding the language of change through linguistics” is an introductory overview of what sociolinguistics is, how Dr. Wagner came to join the field, and a little bit about some of the work we’ve done in the lab on sound change in Michigan. The short video captures only a tiny part of the bigger picture, but the main takeaway is that sociolinguists seek to understand how speakers use language to reflect and construct their identities, and that these actions contribute to language change over time.
Incoming co-director of the lab, Dr. Betsy Sneller, was quoted in this story published May 11, 2020 in The Daily Telegraph, a Sydney-based Australian newspaper. Titled Do you know your lockdown lingo? Test yourself,the piece explores “coronavirus slang” like coronacation, covidiot and social distancing. But why should the pandemic have introduced new words and phrases to the English language?
“Part of the reason for this is that people’s patterns of interactions change drastically and this changes language,” [Sneller] said. She pointed to previous social upheaval caused by wars, mass migrations, disasters and plagues that also made a mark on our language. “The Dutch had a history of ‘pox’-related insults thought to date back to the Black Death.”
Continue ReadingLockdown lingo: Betsy Sneller featured in Daily Telegraph story
Students in LIN 471 Sociolinguistics conduct original research projects on style-shifting by a public figure. Abby Jarosziewicz, an English major with a concentration in Pop Culture, submitted her project on Taylor Swift in Fall 2019, and continued it as an Honors Option in Spring 2020.
Abby examined Swift’s use of “tentative speech”, first labeled by Robin Lakoff (1975) in the seminal book Language and Women’s Place. Lakoff identified numerous examples of hesitant or tentative speech, from which Abby chose two: hedges (e.g. “that was kind of rude”) and disclaimers (e.g. “I think that….”). The questions she asked were:
Does Taylor Swift’s overall use of tentative speech decrease over time as she grows in maturity, confidence and relevance?
Does Taylor Swift consistently use more tentative speech with male interviewers over time?
Abby found in her fall pilot project that Swift used more tentative speech with men at a single point her career. She hypothesized that this would remain the same throughout her career, because Swift’s power relationship with men has largely not changed. Abby also hypothesized, however, that overall Swift would use less and less tentative speech over time.
To test her hypotheses, Abby selected 12 video interviews conducted for 6 album release press tours (Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, Lover) from 2006 to 2019. For each album, one interview was conducted with a male interviewer and one with a female interviewer. 11 of 12 interviewers were white; interviewers were aged 30-65. Abby extracted from the videos every hedge and disclaimer, and calculated their frequency per minute of Swift’s total talk time.
Abby’s hypotheses were upheld. Swift’s overall rate of tentative speech declined across the press tours, from 1.5 per minute during the Taylor Swift launch, to 0.9 during the Lover launch. And at every time point except one, Swift uses more tentative language with the male interviewer than with the female interviewer. The exception is the press tour for Red, in which tentative speech peaks with both interviewer genders, exceeding even the rate for Taylor Swift, at 1.9 tokens/minute.
This study seems to support a narrative in the media about Taylor’s Swift’s growing comfort with public feminism, legal agency and political influence. Nonetheless, more controlled research is required for the findings to be confirmed. Abby points out that there are confounds in the data, such as inconsistency in the ages, ethnicity and familiarity of the interviewers; presence vs absence of a studio audience; and inconsistencies in the amount of talk time per interview and per time point.
Nonetheless, this was a great example of a student taking a class project a step further and asking new questions. Thanks for allowing us to share your results, Abby!
