Here you'll find summaries of the aims, methods, and outcomes of past and present research projects. This page is under construction, my apologies. I forked the repo from rockstar phonetics scholar Rasmus Puggaard-Rode, who has recently, yet unsurprisingly, been hired as linguistics professor at Oxford University.
Graphematic variation
Sustained engagement with language(s), coupled with close attention to graphemic variation in digital contexts, motivated my turn to linguistic research.
My first paper Offsetting love and hate:The prosodic effects of the non-standard 1sg in tweets to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn over four days of the UK general election. Was based on findings from my research MA in language sciences and focused on the non-standard lowercase i as 1st person singular pronoun, claiming that this form is not accidental but a meaningful linguistic variant with its own mechanisms. I used linguistic and statistical analysis of a corpus of tweets directed at Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the UK general elections, with attention to collocations (slurs, hapax, conjunctions), to test the hypothesis that the variant functions pragmatically as a mitigator in divisive discourse, softening statements as a form of precaution. I predicted that there would be higher frequency of collocation with slurs and hate words, and the results of this particular study validated this.
The semantic interpretation of graphematic variation developed from a post-structuralist trajectory and, thanks to sociolinguistic and metapragmatic inquiry has been allowed space to reconsider the functional variability of the sign.
Attenuative sociophonetics
It's well established that speakers shift pronunciation based on context, and this very natural fluidity in representations of self extends to the page, especially given the exponential increase in the typed word since the past decade. The need to portray a lessened voice online ties in closely with stance and face. In my thesis and in a couple of papers, I suggest the subvocalization of the non-standard 1SG--which is a visually lessened glyph--is also attenuated, and correlates with a monophthongal schwa or mid-back vowel in the F2 offglide.
In T. Cho, K. Sahyang, K. Say Young & L-K. Sang Im (eds.), Hanyang International Symposium of Phonetics and Cognitive Sciences of Language. 3 Vol.2 (ISBN 2586-7776), pp.196-198. Hanyang University, Korea., the extended abstract I presented at HisPhonCog 2023, I use the offlglide of the F2 formants taken from pver a hundred mass-media audio tokens annotated as 'percieved-as standard 1SG' and 'perceived as non-standard 1SG' to support my hypothesis that he correlant sound of the NS1SG vowel is monophtongized/mid-back.