Research Project Examples
Title: Crafting Latinidad in the Age of Social Media: A Digital Exploration
Researcher: Kiara Amezcua, ’26
Abstract: How are Latinx people performing their identity on social media? What linguistic features do they display to showcase their identity? This study investigated how Latinxs perform their identity through different linguistic markers (lexical variants, phonological variants, etc.) and visual features (emojis, clothing, captions, etc.) on social media within short-form content, such as TikTok and Instagram Reels.
Title: A Computational Exploration of Variation in White Hmong Tonal Realization: Does Meaning Shape Tone?
Researcher: Henry Heyden, ’26
Abstract: While prior work has shown that utterance position and preceding tone height affect White Hmong tonal realization, the role of lexical factors such as word type and meaning remains under explored. This study investigated these factors using a read speech corpus of White Hmong.
Title: An Acoustic Examination of Demographic Differences in Speech Patterns
Researchers: Linguistics, Philosophy, WGSS, and Data Science students, 2023 – 2026
Abstract: Do speakers within specific demographic groups display consistent vocal and acoustic patterns? Do these acoustic profiles differ significantly across broader population samples? This study collected and analyzed a dataset comprising over 51,897,456 individual statistical measurements to evaluate variations in acoustic features across diverse speaker populations.
Additional student/faculty research collaborations:
- comparing initial consonant mutation behaviour in Welsh and Patagonian Welsh
- analyzing the use of speech and song in Brazilian Tropicália music
- investigating interactive linguistic landscapes in videogames
- studying the sociophonetics of subversive femininities in anime
- exploring the linguistic construction of waterscapes in manga