Embedded Files
My research interests are based in phonetics and sociolinguistics (and their happy lovechild, sociophonetics). You can find selected recent publications (papers, posters, and other links) organized by topic below.
My research interests are based in phonetics and sociolinguistics (and their happy lovechild, sociophonetics). You can find selected recent publications (papers, posters, and other links) organized by topic below.
Hawaiian Phonetics & Sociolinguistics
Hawaiian Phonetics & Sociolinguistics
This project, in collaboration with scholars, students, and teachers of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian), examines the speech of contemporary speakers of Hawaiian. We are studying the pronunciation of vowels in the language to see whether previous descriptions of the language are reflected in the ways people speak it today. Our hope is for our research to help facilitate increased interest in linguistics among Hawaiian speakers and support the important project of revitalization on the Hawaiian islands and beyond. Check out the work of the Hui Makeʻe 'Ōlelo!
Cheng, A., and Solomon, N.H. (August 2025). Heritage Speakerhood in the Hawaiian Context. New Ways of Analyzing Variation Asia Pacific 8, Singapore.
Cheng, A., Davidson, L., Parker Jones, O., Kettig, T., and Solomon, N.H. (March 2025). ʻŌlelo aku, ʻōlelo mai: Building Reciprocity into ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi pronunciation research. 9th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation, Honolulu, Hawai‘i.
Solomon, N.H., Cheng, A., Keamoai-Koka, M., and Procter, H. (November 2024). Vowel length and stress patterns among New Fluent Speakers of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian). New Ways of Analyzing Variation 52, Miami, Florida.
Korean American Sociophonetics & Sociolinguistics
Korean American Sociophonetics & Sociolinguistics
This project engages the young Korean American speech community and examines the production and perception of their speech in English and Korean. I have looked at their participation in the California Vowel Shift and their base pitch in both languages. Data come from bilingual ethnographic interviews, which provide a deeper understanding of each individual's language backgrounds, attitudes, ideologies, and idiosyncrasies, and also allows for adjacent analyses of topic-based style-shifting, speech accommodation, and more.
Cheng, A., Jeon, L., and Kim, D.E. (2023). A comparative study of English vowel shifts and vowel space area among Korean Americans in three dialect regions. Journal of Linguistic Geography, 11(1), 38-52. [pdf][doi]
Cheng, A. (2022). Indescribable: The Construction and Enregisterment of Korean American Ethnolinguistic Identity. Amerasia Journal, 47(3), 387-404. [pdf][doi]
Cheng, A. (2021). Maintenance of phonetic and phonological distance in the English and Korean back vowel contours of heritage bilinguals. Journal of Phonetics, 89, 101109. [pdf][doi]
Cheng, A. and Cho, S. (2021). The effect of ethnicity on identification of Korean American speech. Languages, 6, 186. [pdf][doi]
Cheng, A. (2020). Cross-linguistic f0 differences in bilingual speakers of English and Korean. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147, EL67-EL73. [pdf][doi]
Micronesian Diaspora Languages in Hawaiʻi
Micronesian Diaspora Languages in Hawaiʻi
With funding from the National Science Foundation, the Diaspora Languages Project in Hawaii (DLPHI) supports diaspora language communities through training in linguistic documentation methods and research that focuses on the Micronesian Diaspora in Hawaiʻi.
Mayer, C. , Easterday, S. , Bialo, K. , Cheng, A., Saumar, L. , & McDonnell, B. (December 2025). Investigating utterance-final vowel reduction in Woleaian. 189th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu, Hawai‘i. [poster]
Korean Linguistics & Korean as a Heritage Language
Korean Linguistics & Korean as a Heritage Language
I examine the timecourse of a sound change in Seoul Korean and its advancement in Korean American populations, as well as the phonetic and phonological consequences of bilingual phonology. My newest project, still in prep, uses ultrasound technology to examine the Korean liquid /ㄹ/ and its articulatory differences compared to English taps.
Infant-Directed Speech: Bilingual and Bicultural considerations
Infant-Directed Speech: Bilingual and Bicultural considerations
In collaboration with Henny Yeung's Language Learning and Development Lab at Simon Fraser University, I am exploring the acoustics of infant-directed speech and other topics related to child language development, with a focus on bilingual parents, bilingual acquisition, and the consequences of bicultural identity on language development.
Cheng, A., McClay, E. , & Yeung, H. (2026). Mothers and Creak. In F. Venturi (Ed.) Creak: Theories and Practices of Pulse Phonation (pp. 413-429). Jenny Stanford Publishing. [link]
Cheng, A., McClay, E., and Yeung, H. (2023). An Exploration of Voice Quality in Mothers Speaking Canadian English to Infants. Language Learning and Development. [doi]
Cheng, A., Ali, F., and Yeung, H. (March 2023). Language entropy versus language exposure as factors supporting multilingual language development. SRCD 2023 Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah. [pdf]
Cheng, A., Lai, A., and Yeung, H. (July 2022). The Influence of Bilingualism on Pitch in Infant-Directed Speech. The International Congress of Infant Studies, Ottawa, Canada.
ROLE Collective
ROLE Collective
The "Reframing Our Language Experience" (ROLE) Collective is a consortium of scholars working against harmful language beliefs in policy and practice, within academia and beyond. Visit our website to view educational resources for teachers and students, information about our annual symposium, and more!
Namboodiripad, S., Kutlu, E., ... Cheng, A., ... & Wright, K. E. (2026). Finding our ROLE: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language. Cognition, 271, 106444. [pdf]
Cheng, A., Cabrera Pérez, R., Johnson, M.T., Baese-Berk, M.M., Namboodiripad, S., Kutlu, E., and the ROLE Collective. (Under Review). Who’s Exempt from the Big, Bad TOEFL? A reflection on American universities’ language screening policies for international students. In Linguistic Discrimination in US Higher Education, 2nd ed. Routledge.
Asian Americans and Canadians & Raciolinguistics
Asian Americans and Canadians & Raciolinguistics
Together with a diverse coalition of Asian identified linguists from the United States and Canada, I am working on increasing representation and understanding of people of Asian descent (broadly defined) as uniquely racialized individuals within linguistics as an academic field.
Garza, J., Lee, C., Cheng, A., and Ánand, A. (2023). Asian American Racialization and Model Minority Logics in Linguistics. In Wolfram, W., Charity Hudley, A., and Valdes, G. (eds.) Language and Social Justice in the USA. Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 152(3), 130-146. [doi]
Cheng, A., Cheng, L.S.P. , Gonzales, W.D.W. , & Umbal, P. (2024). Variation in Asian and Pacific Islander North American English: What the patterns of scholarship demonstrate about race and ethnicity in Sociolinguistics. Asia-Pacific Language Variation, 10(1), 67-105. [doi]
Ánand, A., Lee, C., Cheng, A., and Garza, J. (January 2021). Room at the Table: Locating Asian Identity in Linguistics and the LSA (with L. Hou, N. Mararac, S. Shankar, E. Chun, J. Lee, A. Lo, and A. Reyes). Organized session at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco, California.
Cheng, A., Faytak, M., and Cychosz, M. (2016). Language, race, and vowel space: Contemporary Californian English. In Clem et al. (eds.) Proceedings of the Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 63-78. [pdf]
Other Sociolinguistics Projects
Other Sociolinguistics Projects
I am happily looking for collaborators on projects involving the language in media and the study of voices on YouTube and other social media outlets, with a particular focus on Asian Americans, other racially minoritized speakers, and LGBTQ+ speakers. Please contact me if you are interested!
Cheng, A. (2023). Second Dialect Acquisition "in real time": Two longitudinal case studies from YouTube. American Speech, 98(2), 194-224. [pdf][doi]
Cheng, A. (2023). 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' and other Oscars 2023 films show a trend towards linguistic realism in Hollywood. The Conversation. [link]
Cheng, A. & Mararac, N. (June 2021). “Not Here for Performative Activism: Two gay Asian Americans spill the tea.” Committee on LGBTQ+ Issues in Linguistics Blog Posts. [link]
Page updated
Report abuse