Category: Undergraduates

Former PA Julia Bolash featured in CAL Profile

October 14, 2026

Former Professorial Assistant (PA) and member of the Sociolinguistics Lab, Julia Bolash was recently featured in a College of Arts and Letters (CAL) news profile. As a PA, Julia attended the Socio Lab and worked with MI Diaries, where she helped keep everything running and was responsible for many of our beautiful graphics.. She is majoring in Experience Architecture with minors in Graphic Design and Museum Studies, and co-founded and leads the Spartan Printing Association. To hear more about Julia's impressive achievements, and brilliance with 1920s Printing Presses, please check out the CAL Profile linked below! Congratulations Julia! Read more on the College of Arts and Letters website here.

Lab member Connor Mason wins First Place UURAF Award

September 10, 2026

Connor Mason, an undergraduate Sociolinguistics Lab member and Professorial Assistant for the MI Diaries project, won first place in the Linguistics, Languages, and Speech category at MSU's 2026 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Fair (UURAF). The project focused on the usage of 'lowkey' in contemporary American English, incorporating data from the MI Diaries corpus to track changes in apparent time regarding the grammatical distribution of 'lowkey'. Connor was advised by Dr. Suzanne Wagner and Dr. Betsy Sneller. Congratulations, Connor! Read more on the College of Arts and Letters website here.

Conferences / Events / Research / Undergraduates

Honors Students Present Sociolinguistic Research at UURAF

September 9, 2026

Over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year, Dr. Betsy Sneller and Dr. Suzanne Wagner led an Honors Research Seminar on the MI Diaries project for Honors undergraduate students at Michigan State. During this time, students of the seminar designed and executed original sociolinguistic research projects and presented their findings in poster format at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum in April 2026 (read more about UURAF and the linguistics and languages students who presented). Congratulations, Honors Seminar members! Lab member Lin Cabada also presented an independent research project that grew from an Honors Option paper they completed for Dr. Wagner's Language and Gender class in Fall 2025. Here's a list of the presenters and their poster titles: Mary Cavagnetto and Elle Jacobson / How do people talk about accents in Michigan’s Thumb and UP? / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Chae Eun Park and Keira Wesley / Social perceptions of uh vs. um / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Rachel Ross / “So, uhm, yeah”: A case study of uhm development between 5-9 years old / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Lily Kwon and Bai Yang Clemens / Is “low-key” going low-key adverbial? / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller Connor Mason / A lowkey examination of lowkey in the MI Diaries corpus / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller (with assistance from Adam Barnhardt) Allison Phillips, Antony Tokrri, Jad Assaf / “Pretty” is pretty cool / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller (with assistance from Annan Kirk) Lin Cabada / Gender-marked occupational terms at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum / Suzanne Wagner Allison Phillips, Antony Tokrri, and Jad Assaf Bai Yang Clemens and Lily Kwon Mary Cavagnetto and Elle Jacobson Lin Cabada Connor Mason Keira Wesley Rachel Ross

Research / Undergraduates

Connor Mason Accepted to First American Dialect Society Research Incubator

September 4, 2026

Undergraduate Connor Mason's abstract investigating the syntax and sociolinguistics of Lowkey, "A Lowkey investigation of Lowkey," was recently accepted to the American Dialect Society's first Research Incubator. The Research Incubator is an opportunity to get feedback on work in progress for early-career researchers. Congratulations Connor!

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

MSU (socio)linguists reunited at NWAV 53

November 21, 2025

The NWAV 53 conference (November 5-7, 2025) was a big success for MSU linguistics! In addition to presenters, our general crew included alumni of the MSU Linguistics PhD program (Mingzhe Zheng, Monica Nesbitt) and Second Language Studies program (Jie Liu); MSU Linguistics MA (Jack Rechsteiner); and MSU Linguistics BA (Wil Rankinen). In addition to Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner, faculty were represented by Karthik Durvasula (Linguistics, phonetics/phonology) and Rose Fisher (German). We were also delighted to include undergraduates from the Honors Seminar that Betsy and Suzanne are co-teaching 2025-2026 and from the Sociolinguistics Lab, as well as current graduate students. Here's to another great NWAV in 2026 in Montreal!

Read more about the article MSU (socio)linguists reunited at NWAV 53

(l-r back) Jie Liu, Mingzhe Zheng, Anthony Tokrri, Alison Phillips, Wil Rankinen, Connor Bechler, Karthik Durvasula, Jack Rechsteiner, Sophie Motawi, Drake Howard, [unknown], Millie Hacker, Adam Barnhardt. (l-r front) Shuyang Wei, Monica Nesbitt, [unknown], Bai Yang Clemens, Lily Kwon, Rose Fisher, Annan Kirk, Betsy Sneller, Jess Shepherd, Julia Bolash, Connor Mason, Suzanne Evans Wagner, [unknown].