WHERE: Shanks 370/380

WHEN: May 5th, 4-7:30 PM

GUEST SPEAKERS: Caroline Amodeo (IU), Katie Conner (OSU)

ABSTRACT:

This annual event consisted of gallery-style poster sessions where students in ENGL 4084 (the Language Sciences Minor capstone course) and students in labs shared their original research projects with our VTLx community. In 2025, there were also featured talks from two Language Sciences alumnae now pursuing graduate degrees in the Language Sciences! 

As is tradition, the conference was followed by a reception and a ceremony celebrating graduating Language Science minors.

University of Canterbury

A Sense of Space in Digital Spaces: The Role of Geography in Social Media Dialectology 

WHERE: Shanks 370/380

WHEN: March 19, 12:15-1:15 PM

ABSTRACT:

The advent of location-based social media platforms has provided sociolinguists a valuable resource at exploring linguistic variation at scale. While some linguists have taken the view that language-use on social media platforms are organised in a similar manner as in-person communication, the question remains whether geography still plays a role in place-based language variation now users are no longer bound by their physical location. In this talk, I discuss how geographic relationships are reproduced and constructed on different social media platforms through language-use with a focus on New Zealand – as both a space and a place. Additionally, I will discuss the challenges and opportunities of using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to complement existing approaches in computational sociolinguistics.

Indiana University Bloomington

We All Win: Academic Resources and Cultural Continuity in the Chin Diaspora Community of Indianapolis

WHERE: Shanks 370/380

WHEN: Feb 27, 5-6 PM

ABSTRACT:

This talk describes a collaboration between Indiana University scholars and members of the local Chin community. Chin people hail originally from Chin state in Northwest Burma, where decades of military aggression and ethno-religious persecution have contributed to ongoing forced migration. Indiana is now home to 40,000+ Chin refugees who speak dozens of undocumented languages. Community interest in safeguarding their linguistic and cultural knowledge—which could keep scholars busy for several lifetimes—is high: as in other diaspora communities, displacement from traditional homelands has not erased Chin linguistic and cultural knowledge but it has created new challenges for their transmission. The Academy has many resources that can help meet these challenges (e.g. physical and financial assets; technological infrastructure). As such, here in Indiana we are in position to pursue novel scholarship and community-led projects in tandem. To do so, we have worked to nurture connections between community members and academics that are founded on trust and reciprocity. In this talk we discuss the model for engagement developed by our team, the Chin Languages Research Project, a collaboration of IU scholars (e.g., linguists, ethnographers) and students (graduate and undergraduate, Chin and non-Chin). We highlight the way that our Chin team members serve as a crucial bridge between the academy and the community, and provide an overview of projects like our in-language ethnographic interviews with elders and YouTube videos for children.

University of Alabama

Rootedness and Language: Big and Small Places and Their Impact on Language Variation

WHERE: Newman Library Goodall Room

WHEN: Oct 23, 3-4 PM

ABSTRACT:

Place and language are inextricably intertwined. From large, recognized regions with widely known and circulating notions to smaller but still influential locations, a speaker’s relationship to these places is crucial to understanding language variation. In this talk, I will discuss work where both types of places play a critical role. First, I will show how the presence of Appalachian English features is mediated through a speaker’s rootedness, i.e., their local place-based orientation. Appalachia has various tropes that are well-known in the U.S. – a place of exploitation and poverty and also a place of beauty and home. Speakers appear to be aware of both conceptions and can orient to or away from features that index the region. From stereotypical and caricatured features to lesser-known features, rootedness matters. Then, I will explore how smaller yet still important places, here a university, also show the influence of a speaker’s attachment to place. A university can have competing notions as to what it means in a local society – it can be imbued with locally important meanings or broader meanings of higher education. I will conclude with a discussion of why discussions of place and place orientation matter for both linguistics and related fields.