Research

I am a sociocultural linguist who specializes in critical, ethnographic, and functional approaches to language and language learning. My research agenda responds to current efforts within the field of applied linguistics to address issues of race and racism in language education. My research advances these efforts in the areas of study abroad programming, sociolinguistic competence, and language ideologies related to the native speaker construct. I primarily examine data that I generated through ethnographic fieldwork in Peru and focus on how language ideologies (i.e. non-neutral ideas and beliefs about social and linguistic relationships) inform the ways that study abroad students learn a variety of Spanish shaped my contact with Quechua, an indigenous language.  

Three key ideas guide my research:

  • Language is a non-neutral social practice
  • Language is about people
  • Language learning is an inherently social process

I advance two main arguments through my research:

  • People learn and use sociolinguistic variation (i.e. socially meaningful linguistic forms) as a social practice. 
  • Language ideologies underlie people’s sociolinguistic competence (i.e. their knowledge of the social and contextual appropriateness of sociolinguistic variation).

I am co-editor of the forthcoming edited volume Aquí se habla: Centering the local and personal in Spanish language education (Mouton De Gruyter) with Adam Schwartz, Dalia Magaña, and Sergio Loza.

Current research projects

Spanish and Quechua language learning during study abroad in Southern Peru

My primary research project investigates language learning during study abroad in Cuzco, Peru in the context of Spanish immersion programs that provide language instruction in Quechua. This project uses data collected during 24 months of ethnographic research in Southern Peru between 2014-2022. A key focus of this research is learners’ development of sociolinguistic competence, which describes the process through which learners are socialized into knowledge of appropriate language use in the host society which informs their ability to use and perceive socially meaningful linguistic forms. I scrutinize the roles and perspectives of different SA stakeholders in this process (e.g. local language teachers, host families, study abroad administrators, indigenous community partners) and examine how second language learners view themselves and others through the lens of the local variety of Spanish in contact with Quechua.
Some of the questions that I explore in this research include the following:

  • What does language learning during study abroad look like in a multilingual community where race orients who counts as a native speaker and what linguistic practices are considered competent and appropriate?
  • What is the nature of students’ exposure to the local varieties of Quechua and Spanish during their study abroad experience?
  • What are students taught about the use of local dialect features in Spanish in relation to ways of speaking and types of people in the host society?
  • How do learners perceive the local variety of Spanish and what do their perceptions tell us about their choices to adopt local dialect features in production?
  • In what ways can language learning during study abroad uphold and contribute to forms of racial and linguistic discrimination in the host society?

(2024) Ideology, indexicality, and the L2 development of sociolinguistic perception during study abroad. L2 Journal. 

(2024) Missed opportunities: Oral corrective feedback, heritage learners of Spanish, and study abroad in Peru. Heritage Language Journal. Co-authored with Sergio Loza.

(2024) Inappropriate identities: Racialized language ideologies and sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Applied Linguistics.

(2023) Limited gains, restricted access: Student insights from study abroad in Peru. Study Abroad and the Second Language Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation in Spanish. John Benjamins.

(2022) Es un mal castellano cuando decimos ‘su’: Language instruction, raciolinguistic ideologies and study abroad in Peru. Linguistics & Education.

(2018) Acquiring Cuzco: Marginalized language, ideology, and study abroad in Peru [Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University]

 

Deconstructing the “native speaker” of Spanish and Quechua

There is a growing consensus within linguistics and applied linguistics that the term “native speaker” is vague and harmful (see Birkeland et al. 2024) However, the idea of native speaker competence is baked into many of the theories and methods we use in language research and teaching. What is our path forward?

Anna Babel (Ohio State) and I address this issue by interrogating the language ideologies that underlie what it means to be a speaker of a language. Through our combined decades of ethnographic research with Quechua speakers in Bolivia and Peru, we show a different conceptualization of “speakerhood” in multilingual, transnational communities that contrasts with the idea of the native speaker as a construct born of European ethnolinguistic nationalism and colonialism. This project contributes to efforts to re-center Spanish language education away from a native-speaker model and to question whose linguistic practices ultimately are counted as “true” or “authentic” Quechua and Spanish.

Critiques of the ‘native speaker’ are also central to my research on second language learners’ development of sociolinguistic competence during study abroad. Through my findings, I argue for a reconceptualization of “appropriateness” within  second language acquisition scholarship on sociolinguistic competence. This means examining people’s knowledge of the social and contextual appropriateness of language in terms of language ideologies rather than objective  native speaker norms.

 

(2024) Decentering the colonial native speaker. Language. Co-authored with Anna M. Babel.(2024) Inappropriate identities: Racialized language ideologies and sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Applied Linguistics.

(2022) Es un mal castellano cuando decimos ‘su’: Language instruction, raciolinguistic ideologies and study abroad in Peru. Linguistics & Education.

(2021) “What does “Native Speaker” mean, anyway?” (with Anna M. Babel). Language Log, University of Pennsylvania, published May 29.

(2021) “Y, entonces, ¿qué significa ser ‘hablante nativo’?” (with Anna M. Babel). Blog del grupo Español en Contacto, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, published June 14.

(2021) Consequential Choices: A language ideological perspective on learners’ (non-) adoption of a dialectal variant. Foreign Language Annals 54(3), 607-625. DOI: 10.1111/flan.12574

 

Linguistic landscapes

My nascent research project on linguistic landscapes examines: 1) the use of Spanish on street signs in Eugene, Oregon and 2) the use of Quechua on street signs in Southern Peru.

Eugene, OR: This project examines the use of Spanish on public signs in downtown Eugene, Oregon and explores the ways that these signs contribute (or not) to creating welcoming and inclusive public spaces for Spanish speakers from the local community. This research has been done in collaboration with my undergraduate students in an advanced class (Spanish 420 “Paisajes lingüísticos”) who have helped in data collection and analysis and in interpreting research findings. One key finding is that the visibility of Spanish in the linguistic landscape of downtown Eugene is intricately tied to security concerns related to the local unhoused/transient community that includes few Spanish speakers. Student research teams use their findings to create sets of recommendations for future Spanish signage. During an initial phase of this project, my students and I shared our research findings and recommendations with city employees and local government officials. Following this meeting in May 2020, our recommendations began to be implemented in the creation of new signs in downtown Eugene. This project not only documents the use of Spanish on public signs over time but also demonstrates how involving our students in research can empower them to transform local communities as critically-engaged members of our society.

“Spanish in the linguistic landscape of Eugene, Oregon” – Oregon Humanities Center “work-in-progress” talk (March 1st 2024)

“Undergrad melds math and language to help folks find their way” AroundtheO 

“UO Spanish Professor Suggests Ways to Make Bilingual Signs Inclusive in Downtown Eugene” KLCC News/NPR

Azusena Rosales Suares (B.A. Spanish/Math 2023): Lost in translation: An analysis of English-Spanish signage translations in downtown Eugene, Oregon Clark Honors College thesis, University of Oregon

Maya Mackey (B.A. Spanish/Global Studies 2020) received a Global Studies award at the 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium for her research as part of this project. Read Maya’s Graduate Spotlight here.
Cuzco, Peru: This second project documents the use of Quechua, Spanish, and English in the linguistic landscape of Cuzco, Peru and the surrounding region. It focuses on signs in plazas and the ways that Quechua serves as part of a marketing strategy for tourism linked to a reverence for the glories of the Inka Empire. Some of the questions that guide this research include the following: Where is Quechua used the most on public signs in and around Cuzco and how does this relate to the presence of tourism in the area? How is Quechua represented orthographically? On what kinds of signs is Quechua used the most? How do locals and tourists interpret the use of Quechua on particular signs? While this research is still in its initial phase, a key finding has been that the more tourism that exists in a town, the more Quechua is present in the linguistic landscape of the town plaza.