Hello! I’m an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University.
Specifically, I am a sociophonetician: I study how speech sounds are produced and the reasons why they vary, with the goal of understanding language as a cognitive and a social system. My primary empirical focus is accent and mobility, or ‘second dialect acquisition’. By observing how mobile individuals adopt (or resist) features of new regional accents, we can learn more about how words and sounds are represented in the mind, how speakers link social meaning to linguistic form, and how they use language to communicate complex social identities and attitudes. Read more about my research here!
I am on sabbatical until Fall 2025!
News
