People – Page 5 – Sociolinguistics Lab

Newt Kelbley accepted into the Forensic Linguistics MA program at Cardiff University

January 19, 2023

Socio Lab member Newt Kelbley (BA Linguistics) has been accepted in to the Forensic Linguistics MA program at Cardiff University in Wales. Congratulations, Newt!

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.”

Summer Research Opportunities

January 19, 2023

MI Diaries Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) 2023

Are you interested in how people tell the stories of their community?
Or in how the pandemic might have affected the way people speak?
Do you want to gain some research experience?
Apply to join us in summer 2023 at Michigan State Sociolinguistics Lab!

Click here for more information about the MI Diaries Summer 2023 Research Experience for Undergraduates on our project website!

Click here to watch the informal webinar with a presentation by Dr. Betsy Sneller on the details of the MI Diaries Summer 2023 Research Experience for Undergraduates — what it is, how to apply, and Q&A.

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)

For students looking for a full-time paid experience, we offer a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). MI Diaries is a National Science Foundation funded project. We especially encourage students from historically underrepresented groups and/or minority-serving institutions to apply.

Location: The Sociolinguistics Lab at Michigan State University‘s East Lansing, MI campus.
Eligibility: US citizens registered as undergraduate students in Summer 2023 (depending on the institution, this may include incoming freshmen).
Duration: 8 weeks in the summer (June 5 – July 28, 2023).
Pay: $600 per week for 30 hours work per week.
Background: Students do not need prior linguistics experience to apply!

Faculty / People / Research

MI Diaries app gets NEH grant to go open-source

February 17, 2022

NEH Grant to Develop Open-Source Code for Self-Recording Mobile App

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.

Alumni / Faculty / People

Visiting Research Scholar: Irina Zaykovskaya

November 17, 2021

Head and shoulders of Irina Zaykovskaya, looking at camera and smiling — Dr. Irina Zaykovskaya

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.

You can read more about Irina on her personal website.

Events / Faculty / People / Research

The interdisciplinary water cooler

October 30, 2021

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.

Details

Friday, November 5, 2021
12PM-1PM EDT via Zoom

Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/96411904159
Passcode: msuc4i