Dissertation:
(Supervised by Robin Clark, William Labov, Mark Liberman, and Hiram Smith.)
Manuscripts Under Review & Forthcoming Papers:
Currently writing!
PAPERS:
“A Corpus Phonetic Study of Contemporary Persian Vowels in Casual Speech” in the Penn Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL Vol 25.1). 2019. Available here.
"Tweets as Graffiti: What The Reconstruction of Vulgar Latin Can Tell Us About Black Twitter". to appear in English in Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. L. Squires (in press).
"'Eem' Negation in African American English: A Next Step In Jespersen's Cycle?" in the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in linguistics (PWPL Vol. 22.1: Proceedings of the 39th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference). Available here.
"Talmbout: An Overlooked Verb of Quotation in AAE" in the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in linguistics (PWPL Vol. 22.2: Select Papers from NWAV44). Available here.
"An Investigation of Intervocalic Affricate Simplification in Mandarin" in the Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Available here.
"Semantic Bleaching and the Emergence of New Pronouns in AAVE" in LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts (Vol. 6). 2015. With Christopher Hall. Extended Abstract available here.
Conference talks:
Upcoming:
COVID-19
Past:
“African American English in the Judicial Linguistic Marketplace: Do Black Court Reporters Transcribe AAE better than their Nonblack Counterparts?”, with Jessica Kalbfeld, Ryan Hancock, and Robin Clark, at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, 2020, in New Orleans, LA.
“The Great Migration and Multiple AAE Vowel Systems: Regional Variation in the Vocalic System of African American English” at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, 2020, in New Orleans, LA.
“Regional Variation in the Vocalic System of African American English: Different Than White English, and Patterns with the Great Migration.” at NWAV48 in October, in Eugene, OR.
“Two (New) Ways of Analyzing Mergers” at NWAV47 in New York, NY.
"AAE Intensifier 'Dennamug': Syntactic Change in Apparent Time" at NWAV46 in Madison, WI.
"'In my mind I was like': Speaker Strategies for Differentiating Thought and Speech in the Age of Quotative be like", poster presentation with Christopher Hall, at NWAV46 in Madison, WI.
"An Argument for Construct State in Zulu" at LSA2018 in Salt Lake City.
Panel discussion on African American English and the Corpus of Regional African American Language, at LSA2018, in Salt Lake City (Co-authored paper with Jason McLarty and Christopher Hall).
Panel Discussion on African American English at NWAV45 in Vancouver.
Nonstandard Dialect Comprehension in the Courtroom, at LSA 2017 in Austin, TX.
An application of Geostatistics to Atlas of North American English Telephone Survey Data, at ADS 2017 in Austin, TX.
"From Intensifier to Negation: 'Eem' and Jespersen's Cycle in African American English". at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Short abstract here. (Long abstract) winner of LSA Student Abstract Award.
"An Analysis of Rachel Doležal’s Linguistic Performance of “Blackness”", at the 2016 Annual Meeting of The American Dialect Society. With Christopher Hall. (poster)
" A Morphophonological Account of 'Totes' Constructions in English" at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. With Lauren Spradlin.
"Talmbout: An Overlooked Verb of Quotation" at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 44.
"An Investigation of Intervocalic Affricate Simplification in Mandarin" at the International Congress of Phonetic Science (ICPHS) 2015. With Aletheia Cui.
"Eem Negation in AAVE: A Next Step in Jespersen's Cycle" at the Penn Linguistics Conference 39.
"‘Yeen kno nun bout dat’: Using Twitter to map AAVE dialect regions" at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Dialect Society.
"Semantic Bleaching and the Emergence of New Pronouns in AAVE" at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. With Christopher Hall. Extended Abstract available here.
Invited talks:
Upcoming:
Guest lecture for “Language Use in African American Communities” (graduate level) at the University of Arizona, March 23, 2021.
Lunch Sociolinguistics talk at GC CUNY Graduate Center, dateTBD
Past:
Testimony before a joint session of the Pennsylvania House and Senate, on linguistic discrimination, co-hosted by the Legislative Black Caucus, February 19, 2021.
Invited talk for the general public, “Yiddish for the Skittish: A Gentle Introduction to Jewish Languages”, at B’nei Jeshurun, NYC.
Invited lecture at The New School, October 20
American Monuments Think Tank at UC Irvine, March 7, 2020.
Invited Talk and Guest Lecture at Yale, February 19, 2020.
"An argument for the Construct State in Zulu" at Common Ground at University of Pennsylvania, December 4, 2017.
"Miscomprehension in the Courtroom" sociology/sociolinguistics brown bag lunch at North Carolina State University, Spring 2018.
Guest lecturer on AAE, October 17, 2016. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Guest lecturer on AAE, April 5, 2016. Gettysburg College.
"Valley Girls, Black Preachers, and True Scotsmen on the Internet: The Construction of Identity Through Orthography." April 5, 2016. Gettysburg College.
"Nonstandard Dialect Comprehension in the Courtroom" with Jessica Kalbfeld, March 9, 2016. New York University.
Guest lecturer in African American Studies: "Black Tweets Matter" with Christopher Hall, February 10, 2016, University of Texas San Antonio
"From The Tower to the Trenches: Using a Social Science Education Outside of Academia", with Christopher Hall, February 10, 2016, University of Texas San Antonio.
Sociolinguistics Lunch talk, May 8th, 2015, at New York University.
Sociolinguistics Lunch talk, January 12, 2015, at Stanford University.
Guest lecturer on AAE, January 12, 2015, at Stanford University.
Workshops:
New Methods in Computational Sociolinguistics, Leiden, Netherlands, November 5-9, 2018.
Current projects:
“Regional Dialect Variation in African American Language: Spatial and Sociological Factors” (Dissertation)
"Implicature and Insult: A Game Theoretic Approach to Micro-aggression"
"An Evolutionary Game Theory Approach to Slang and the Euphemism Treadmill"
"A Spatial Analysis of Segregation and Basilectal AAE Use on Social Media"
Awards:
LSA Student Abstract Award
American Dialect Society Student Travel Award
Moore Family Memorial Fellowship
Benjamin Franklin Fellowship
MEdia:
COURT REPORTER TRANSCRIPTION OF AAE:
“Court Reporters May Be Writing Down Black People's Testimonies Wrong.” by Leila Ettachfini. Vice Media. May 23, 2019.
“African American English often misunderstood in court.” by Jeff Glorfeld. Cosmos Magazine. May 27, 2019.
“Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile. Testifying while Black.” Daily KOS. May 28, 2019.
Interviewed in Bustle, talking about court reporters and l;anguage attitudes around AAE.
“Speaking Black Dialect in Courtrooms Can Have Striking Consequences.” by John Eligon. New York Times. Jan 25,2019.
“Are Philly court reporters accurate with black dialect? Study: not really.” by Cassie Owens. Philadelphia Inquirer. January 22, 2019.
Discussing orthographic strategies for nonstandard dialects on social media in Philly.com
The court reporters project is at the top of The Sentencing Project’s Race and Justice News monthly electronic newsletter for March 4, 2019.
I was on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane on WHYY to talk about our court reporter research with Cassie Owens, who covered our research in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Kami Chavis, Professor of law and Director of the Criminal Justice Program at Wake Forest School of Law. Listen here.
Deray McKesson, Clint Smith III, Brittany Packnett, and Sam Sinyangwe discussed my coauthored research on Pod Save the People. The segment starts 11 minutes and 58 seconds into the episode. You can listen here.
I spoke with Carol Off on CBC Radio One’s As It Happens about my coauthored court reporter research. Read the transcript and hear the audio of his interview.
On March 7, Blavity wrote about the study based on the transcript of the As It Happens interview.
Language Magazine (not to be confused with the journal Language) published an article about the findings from the study at the beginning of April.
The court reporters study was mentioned in The Hill’s Morning Report on January 28, 2019. It’s towards the bottom under Criminal justice and linguistics.
John McWhorter wrote about the court reporter study in an article in The Atlantic.
Essence.com mentioned the study on January 29, 2018, in an article by Tanya Christian.
Court Scribes, a court reporting agency, has written about the court reporters research on their website.
U.S. News & World Report has picked up Cassie Owens’ story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. This article has since also been picked up by the Associated Press, and the story has been published, via the AP news service, in the following local newspapers: the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review, the Herald-Standard, the Roanoke Times, the Clay-Center Dispatch, the Courier Express, the Bristol Herald Courier, the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Dothan Eagle, the Standard-Journal, the Bradford Era, the Morning Times, and The Eagle.
The study has even been covered in Belgium!
Stefan Roots wrote about the court reporter research on his blog, Chester Matters Blog.
DISCUSSION OF ‘JAWN’
Discussing the Philadelphia word "jawn" on CBS 3
…in Jezebel
…in Philly Mag
Discussing Philadelphia slang in the film Creed, in Metro.
OTHER MEDIA:
Discussing "totes" truncation in the Washington Post.
Discussing the Euphemism Treadmill with Gene Demby on "Here and Now" on NPR.