research

This represents a few of my current and past research projects, for a full overview of my current projects please see my CV.

Dissertation: The role of socioindexical structure in perceptual learning and generalization

My dissertation focuses on the role of socio-indexical structure in perceptual learning and generalization, combining methodological approaches from sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. Using computational and experimental methods, this work provides a novel examination of sociolinguistically viable listener experiences and the relationship to perceptual learning of vowels.

Contextualizing /s/ retraction: Sibilant variation and change in Washington D.C. African American Language

This study explores sibilant variation and change across /stɹ/, /s/, and /ʃ/ using a corpus of Washington D.C. African American Language (AAL).

Considering Performance in the Automated and Manual Coding of Sociolinguistic Variables: Lessons From Variable (ING)

This study examines automated and manual coding of sociolinguistic variables, through the lens of the (ING) variable. We examine the performance of several automated methods including forced alignment, SVMs, and random forests. This is a collaborative project with other members of the Language Variation and Computation Lab.

Perceiving Southernness: Vowel categories and acoustic cues in Southernness ratings

This study examines what acoustic cues contribute to non-Southern listeners’ evaluations of words spoken by Southerners as sounding more or less Southern accented, looking at a range of vowels from across the vowel space.

teaching research

This paper describes a class lab project where students designed their own experiment exploring the social meaning of adjective intensification. This paper summarizes results over two terms of creating and running the experiment.

Language and linguistics students as future linguistics educators (Ongoing)

The goal of this research is to understand the strategies and resources graduate students use to develop as current and future social science educators. This project is in collaboration with Allison Taylor-Adams mixed methods to understand the internal process and resources graduate students use to become educators. More information can be found on my Teaching and Learning Project page.