Category: Research - Page 2 - Sociolinguistics Lab

Emily Duggan Successfully Defends M.A. Thesis

September 1, 2025

This July, Emily Duggan (MA Linguistics 2025) successfully defended her thesis “Lesbian vs. Dyke: An examination of the differences in social meaning between two queer identity terms”. Emily was advised by Prof. Suzanne Wagner, and her committee included Suzanne, Betsy Sneller, and Karthik Durvasula. The thesis is currently available on ProQuest and will later become available on the MSU Library's thesis archive. Congratulations, Emily! Abstract This thesis constitutes a two-part, descriptive research study investigating perceived differences in indexical meaning between the identity terms lesbian and dyke for members of the L1 English-speaking LGBTQ+ community in the United States. The study tested the hypothesis that the meanings of lesbian and dyke have become more similar over time. Results from an initial survey eliciting free associations with the target words suggest that the primary zones of indexical difference between lesbian and dyke for this community are gender identity and expression of the referent. One of the association categories most commonly evoked by lesbian was ‘woman/non-man,’ while one of the association categories most commonly evoked by dyke was ‘masculine/butch/gender non-conforming.’ These indexical mappings and others were confirmed in a second survey, in which respondents rated the strength of association between a subset of elicited descriptors (including ‘woman,’ ‘woman and/or nonbinary,’ ‘femininity,’ and ‘masculinity’) and the identity terms lesbian and dyke. However, contrary to the above hypothesis, the youngest generation of participants were found to report the highest degree of difference between lesbian and dyke for many descriptors. This thesis serves as a model for future studies investigating the nuances of identity language and examines how the phenomenon of semantic change might be viewed through a sociolinguistic lens.

Research

Open position: Post-doc in Linguistics and Education

May 6, 2025

We're hiring! Come and work in the Sociolinguistics Lab under the direction of Dr. Betsy Sneller. Position description The successful applicant will join the MI Diaries project, which is collecting sociolinguistic data from Michiganders across the state. The position primarily will be in helping the MI Diaries project develop partnerships with middle and high school classrooms across the state, developing lesson plans for grades 5-10 based on MI Diaries data (in partnership with WGVU PBS Station), supporting project maintenance, and developing reports or manuscripts about community outreach in collaboration with the principal investigator (Betsy Sneller). We especially invite applicants with a record of success in both sociolinguistics and K-12 Education, as working with schools is a critical component of this position. There are no required teaching responsibilities for the position. Important dates Applications accepted from April 25, 2025 onwards. Review of applications will begin June 1, 2025. The position will remain open until filled. More information See the full position description at MSU Careers.

Conferences / Events / People / Research / Undergraduates

Socio Lab students present at UURAF

April 12, 2025

Undergraduate members of the Sociolinguistics Lab and/or the MI Diaries project team demonstrated their research skills at MSU's 2025 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF) on April 11, 2025. Presenters included: Sabrina Ruiz, Who's afraid of the Big Bad C*nt? Changes in offensiveness across generations. Senior thesis project supervised by Dr. Betsy Sneller. Sara Kirkman, Emoji and age: Exploring age-based variations in expressing emotions via emojis Senior thesis project supervised by Dr. Betsy Sneller. Xhanna Travina, A/B testing for engaging users with Knowledge Commons newsletter emails Mentor: Larissa Babak (College of Arts and Letters) Hannah Choi, Interpreting the simple past as the present perfect (with Jaina Kittle, Kay Humpert, Mason Dellot) Mentors: Alan Munn, Cristina Schmitt (Linguistics) - Language Acquisition Lab Ezekiel Brown, Verb agreement with non-DP subjects Mentors: Alan Munn, Louis Konkoly (Linguistics) - Language Acquisition Lab Sabrina Ruiz with her UURAF poster Xhanna Travina with her UURAF poster.

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

MSU students, faculty, and alumni presenting at NWAV 52

October 15, 2024

The following people from the Sociolinguistics Lab will be presenting at NWAV 52 this year: Adam Barnhardt is seeking expert input on the next stage of his ongoing project via a Project Launch poster titled: Patterns of social meanings indexed to Low-Back-Merger Shifted vowels in Michigan. Connor Bechler will present prior work that he undertook at the University of Kentucky: Evaluating wav2vec2 speech recognition and forced alignment on a multi-varietal language documentation collection. Jessica Shepherd, Drake Howard, and Betsy Sneller will present interim results from Jess's first PhD qualifying paper research: Pronunciation in the [mɪɾən]: Post-tonic /t/ flapping in Michigan: a non-white male-led change. Adam's work and the study by Jess, Betsy, and Drake all use speech data from the MI Diaries project. We'll also be looking out for presentations by the former MSU people shown in bold below: James Stanford, George Stain, Monica Nesbitt: Phonological foundations of ethnic divergence: The Low-Back Merger Shift and the African American Vowel Shift as opposite movements. Kaitlyn Owens and Monica Nesbitt: Changing boundaries: Evidence from Northern Cities Shift categorical perception in Michigan. Amalia Robinson, Monica Nesbitt and Xiao Dong: The phonology of Black women in Boston (across age, ethnicity, and style). Xiao Dong, Fengming Liu, Monica Nesbitt, and Chien-Jer Charles Lin: Social perception of neutral tone and rhotacization in Mandarin Chinese: How do Beijing and Taiwan speakers differ and does place orientation matter? Rebecca Roeder: /ay/ glide weakening in North Carolina and the origins of the Southern Vowel Shift. Dennis Preston and Terumi Imai-Brandle: Reconstructing American English inputs in a globally available mass media product: Intensifiers in the television series Gilmore Girls. See you in Miami!

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…