Research

New article in Language and Linguistics Compass

My paper Second Dialect Acquisition: A Sociophonetic Perspective has just been published in Language and Linguistics Compass. It's a critical review of the sociolinguistic work on SDA.

Abstract: Many people change aspects of their accent after moving to a new region. What kinds of changes are made, and why does it matter? Studies of second dialect acquisition (SDA) indicate that geographically mobile speakers change specific dialect features in ways that reflect the complex interaction of linguistic, social, and developmental factors in language use. This article reviews these findings from a sociophonetic perspective, paying particular attention to their theoretical implications, the methodological issues associated with studying SDA, and avenues for future research. 

Working paper on second dialect acquisition and style variation

Daniel Ezra Johnson and I have been looking at how speakers who are acquiring second dialects shift between their old and new accents in different contexts. A paper version of our NWAV 43 presentation (Partial mergers and near-distinctions: Stylistic layering in dialect acquisition) can now be found in the U Penn Working Papers in Linguistics here.

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Discussion with the Memorial University of Newfoundland Sociolinguistics Reading Group

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(This is not new really, but I am newly linking to it on this website)

Last summer, Paul De Decker (Memorial University of Newfoundland) invited me to speak (remotely) with his department's Sociolinguistics Summer Reading Group about my 2013 paper in Journal of Pragmatics, which dealt with theories of phonological representation via second dialect acquisition data. 

Check out the video of our Google Hangout here (please ignore the fact that I am looking downscreen at the little squares with my interlocutors' faces, instead of at the camera):