Georgetown Research Grant for work on second dialect acquisition
I've just been awarded a Georgetown Summer Academic Grant, which will help me continue my work on how expats and other mobile speakers change their speech after living in a new place. Watch this space for more details!
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.
