Category: People - Page 3 - Sociolinguistics Lab

Two waves of Socio Lab graduate students

October 10, 2024

In the last two years, we've welcomed two waves of new sociolinguistics-oriented graduate students into the Sociolinguistics Lab. In fall 2023, Emily Duggan and Kate Speak began their Masters degrees in Linguistics. Kate has left to pursue a career in secondary education, while Emily is now in her second year and is preparing a masters thesis proposal on the socioindexical meanings of two identity labels, lesbian and dyke. Emily has also participated in the MI Diaries project, most recently as a regular chair of our weekly all-team meetings. Last spring, Emily was a key member of our cross-lab reading group on game theoretic semantics and sociolinguistic meaning. Also in Fall 2023 we welcomed PhD Linguistics students Jessica Shepherd and Annan Kirk. Jessica completed a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics at Brigham Young University. She is really interested in phonological variation between speakers and she's currently working on a project that investigates sound change in Michigan English. Annan has an MA degree in Linguistics from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She's interested in language and gender and in grammatical variation. She's currently looking at adjectival intensifiers in Michigan English. Both Jessica and Annan have been graduate research assistants on the MI Diaries project. Fall 2024 brought two new students to the lab: Hamlin Teng and Connor Bechler. Hamlin holds a masters degree in Sociology from Zhejiang University in China. He's interested in statistical modeling of sociolinguistic variation and change. Currently Hamlin is conducting some research for the MI Diaries project on the demographics and submission patterns of its participants. Connor has a Masters degree in Linguistics from the University of Kentucky. Connor is interested in the phonetics/phonology interface, language change, and developing computational tools for under-resourced languages. He's currently the Sociolinguistics Lab RA and a research assistant on the MI Diaries project.

People / Undergraduates

Student successes beyond the lab

September 1, 2024

In the last few months, current and former lab members have been featured in the College of Arts and Letters news. Here's a roundup: Caroline Zackerman received a Fulbright grant Caroline graduated in spring 2024. She joined the lab as a freshman Professorial Assistant to Dr. Betsy Sneller, worked on the MI Diaries project in a variety of roles, and then became the project manager. Her senior thesis was supervised by Dr. Sneller. Thanks to a Fulbright grant, Caroline is now in Madrid working as an English teaching assistant. Mikayla Thompson created gardens for teaching Indigenous culture Mikayla graduated in spring 2023. Her senior thesis was advised by Dr. Wagner. You can read more about Mikayla's project in this news article, Indigenous Language Revitalization a Top Priority for Linguistics Student (November 2023). More recently, Mikayla was featured in an article about her work in establishing special gardens at MSU and at the nearby Nokomis Cultural Center. Mikayla uses the gardens to educate the public about Indigenous farming practices and cultures. https://cal.msu.edu/news/msu-graduate-creates-gardens-to-preserve-and-protect-indigenous-culture/ Julia Bolash received a prestigious award for MSU freshmen Julia started at MSU in fall 2024. She received a very competitive award, an MSU Alumni Distinguished Scholarship, which covers her tuition, room, and board for up to 8 semesters. Only 13 incoming students received an ADS this year! Julia is currently working as a Professorial Assistant to Dr. Betsy Sneller. https://cal.msu.edu/news/incoming-first-year-students-receive-prestigious-alumni-distinguished-scholarships/ Zhanna Yakubova completed an internship abroad Zhanna has been associated with the lab for a couple of years and she is currently the Social Media Manager for the MI Diaries project. This role builds on Zhanna's internship in summer 2023 in Argentina, where she worked on social media and web design for a non-profit, Observatorio Social. https://cal.msu.edu/news/theatre-and-linguistics-major-gains-broader-global-experience-with-internship-abroad/

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Mikayla Thompson working in the 3 Sisters Garden at the Nokomis Cultural Heritage Center in Okemos, Michigan.

Conferences / Events / People / Research / Undergraduates

Socio Lab members present (and win!) at MSU’s UURAF

May 14, 2024

Undergraduate students from the MSU Sociolinguistics Lab were well represented at the 2024 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF) in April. Gage Landeryou and Caroline Zackerman shared research they conducted for their senior theses in Linguistics under the direction of lab co-director Betsy Sneller. Two other lab students, Drake Howard and Lin Cabada, presented on research that they had conducted for faculty supervisors in French and in Writing respectively. Gage Landeryou gave a winning presentation on transgender speech Gage Landeryou's study was titled ExpressING Gender: The effect of situational comfort on (ing) pronunciation in transgender speech. For this innovative work and for an engaging and professional style, Gage was awarded a prize for best oral presentation in the 'Social Sciences - General' category. Gage Landeryou, one of the two winners for oral presentation in the Social Sciences - General category. Students interacted with visitors and judges UURAF is a huge event. It can be really overwhelming for the in-person, on-site student presenters. According to MSU's UURAF 2024 website: The 26th UURAF was held onsite at the Breslin Center and online at Symposium. Over 1,000 students from 12 colleges participated in the event. They were mentored by over 600 faculty, staff, post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, and government/industry partners. There were over 700 presentations in 32 different subject areas. We're proud to report that Drake, Caroline, and Lin did a great job of explaining their posters to the many visitors and judges who came to see them. Caroline Zackerman explains her poster to a visitor at UURAF 2024. Drake Howard explains his poster to a UURAF 2024 visitor. Students' talks and abstracts Gage Landeryou ExpressING Gender: The Effect of Situational Comfort on (ING) Pronunciation in Transgender Speech This study explores sociolinguistic variation in the speech of binary transgender individuals. My main goal is to investigate how a speaker's comfort with their own gender expression impacts how much they style shift in their pronunciation of (ING) (e.g., pronouncing "running" either as running or runnin') between queer-friendly settings (like their home) versus public settings. Following the methodology of Gratton (2016), who found nonbinary individuals style shifting between private and public settings to avoid the threat of misgendering, I conducted sociolinguistic interviews with 4 binary trans individuals. Each person was interviewed first in their home, and then in a public and not explicitly queer-friendly environment (like a coffee shop). Interviews were transcribed and time aligned, and auditorily coded for pronunciation of (ING). The primary research question was: do trans speakers use their pronunciation of (ING) in public settings to mitigate the threat of being misgendered, in the same way that the nonbinary speakers in Gratton (2016) do?Presenter(s): Mentor: Betsy Sneller (Linguistics) Caroline Zackerman Canadian Raising and Metalinguistic Awareness in Michigan English Canadian Raising is a phonological rule by which the /ay/ diphthong raises before voiceless coda consonants (as in the word PRICE) (Chambers 1973). Speakers of Michigan English do exhibit regular Canadian Raising of /ay/; however, they often consider Canadian Raising to be a uniquely…

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

Socio Lab goes to New York City for NWAV 51

October 16, 2023

Adam Barnhardt presents "Not all sound changes in progress are used in early-adolescent stance-taking" Suzanne Wagner and Jack Rechsteiner in front of Wagner, Sneller & Rechsteiner's poster "Sociolinguistic research projects as brands" at NWAV 51. Betsy Sneller points to a diagram of the Northern Cities shift. 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.

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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