Mapping attitudes in the Romandie

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One of my main areas of research is attitudes and ideologies to language. This project is a perceptual dialectology study of the Romandie, or French-speaking Switzerland. Participants draw borders on maps of the area to show where they think people speak differently, labelling the areas however they like, and I identify patterns in the borders and comments to better understand how residents in the region feel about the different dialects and languages that are found there. 

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Patterns of language endangerment in Labrador Innu communities

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I am collaborating with Dr Nicholas Welch at Memorial University fo Newfoundland (Canada) on a survey about language attitudes and use amongst young adults in Labrador Innu communities. I conducted a similar survey for my Masters thesis; it has now been updated and is being administered in these communities. We hope to determine guage attitudes towards Innu-aimun (the indigenous language spoken by the Innu) and to see if they have changed over the past 20 years.

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Newfoundland and Labrador English

 

I am currently undertaking a real-time study of English in the capital city of St. John's. More news on this project will be shared once the data collection period is over.

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Prior to this, I have conducted variationist analyses on features of Newfoundland English both on my own and in collaboration with Dr Gerard Van Herk (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada) and Dr Becky Childs (James Madison University, USA), using data collected in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, an historic fishing village that now acts as a bedroom community to the provincial capital of St. John's.

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With Dr Van Herk and Dr Paul De Decker (Memorial University, Canada), I have also looked at survey data about language use in the province.

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​Nain Inuit English

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This is my dissertation project, which describes the variety of English emerging in an Inuit community in northern Canada that is transitioning from being Inuktitut dominant to English dominant. This research applies theories of new dialect formation, models of postcolonial Englishes, and variationist sociolinguistic methodologies to develop an initial description of the dialect. I examine phonological, morphosyntactic, and discourse variables to try to create an initial description of this previously unstudied variety, in addition to exploring the intersection of attitudes, language shift, and identity and how they are expressed by community members.

 

[My dissertation is available online through Library and Archives Canada]

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Múin Béarla do na Leanbháin

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I was a research associate on Prof. Karen Corrigan's (Newcastle University, UK) newest project, entitled "Múin Béarla do na Leanbháin” (‘Teach the Children English’): Migration as a prism for viewing ethnolinguistic vitality in Northern Ireland". This study explores the intersection of language and migration in historic and present-day communities in Northern Ireland. I analysed recent interviews with young people from local and migrant families, looking to see if the children and adolescents from non-local families were acquiring and/or using features of Norther Irish English in the same way as their local peers. Please visit the project website for more information.