Linguistics Seminar Series
Fall 2023
We are thrilled to announce the Linguistics Seminar Series for the Fall 2023 semester. The Linguistics Seminar Series features faculty scholars who are involved in language-related research.
The presentations will be hosted each Tuesday from 12:30-1:45pm in Edinburg (ELABS 250), Brownsville (BLHSB 1.314) and via Zoom. We provide pizza and soda for in-person attendees. Check the flyer or contact john.foreman@utrgv.edu for Zoom information.
Please join us this Fall semester as we learn from and with our featured speakers!
Upcoming Events
Ideologías y actitudes sobre la lengua en la frontera sur de Texas
En este estudio se examinan las consecuencias que el contacto lingüístico ejerce sobre una variedad transfronteriza del español en contacto con el inglés. Además de considerar algunos factores que dan forma a las interacciones en las distintas modalidades lingüísticas, se analiza también la manera en que la lengua contribuye a las proyecciones ideológicas, las practicas actitudinales y la negociación de las diversas identidades en esta comunidad bilingüe en el sur de Texas.
José Esteban Hernández is Professor of Hispanic Linguistics in UT-Rio Grande Valley. His research interests include sociolinguistic variation, dialect and language contact, Spanish heritage language, and the construction of identity in contact situations. He has taught courses on language variation and change, the sociolinguistics of U.S Latino communities and Spanish as a Heritage Language.
- Education and technology, the postmodern breakthrough AI generators
The latest debate in education is about creating meaningful artistic experiences through online technology. Many voices are going beyond this point and ask the question of blending technology as an essential tool in education with a motivating individual experience and the most engaging social presence (Thomas, 2013). Thus, education is not valued based on exclusive universal criteria of content delivery only.
Education and teaching value have been at the center of attention ever since postmodern break and consumption society (Goux, Art and market value, 2011; Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1981). Education technology has been rapidly evolving within the context of online economy and pandemic social strains, which changed the way we value education in general. The discussion expanded once technology became a decisive factor in the teaching milieu, rendering exquisite online teaching products more accessible, genre innovative, educational, or commercial.
Education and technology are also symbolic of the way society and values evolve connecting learning to economic modernism on a capitalist market with a continuously fluctuant financial value. The insertion of new technologies in schools only speeded up this process and stressed the lack of a fixed system of learners’ value reference. Learning value is often a result of many of these factors such as the technology involved in its delivery, the rarity of the final student outcomes, the uniqueness of learning experience, as well as the desire for this experience.
Irina Armianu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literatures and Cultural Studies at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley since 2012. Her interest focuses on French Thought, Film Studies and visual arts, and Women and Gender Studies, among which she published: “Memory and Strategies of Displacement in Ma- lika Mokeddem, Nina Bouraoui, and Paulina Chiziane’s Literature” , “Absurd Things and People as Objects in Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s When I Was a Work of Art” , “Ukrainian art and transnational identity in twenty-first century divided Europe”, “Josephine Baker: Artiste and dissident”, “Eurovision: A music Festival of National Identity in Twenty and Twenty-first Century Divided Europe”, “Kenizé Mourad and Early Middle Eastern Feminism”.
Words for ‘sailor’ in the history of the English lexicon
One of the great strengths of the English language, one which affords its speaker-writers broad ranges of expression and fine distinctions of signification, is its vast lexicon. The Oxford English Dictionary, the most extensive record of English vocabulary, lists more than 600,000 words at present. No other European language boasts a comparable sum today. However, in order to exploit the power of the English lexicon, speakers, non-native and native alike, must grapple with myriad sets of near synonyms, sorting items not only by sense but frequently also by dialect, register, and context of usage. In fact, style often requires that one derived form be chosen over one or two other grammatically realizable forms (e.g. yachter in one context and yachtist in another ‘sailor of a yacht’; rafter in one period and raftist never ‘sailor of a raft’). This chapter discusses these matters as they apply to the acquisition of English as a Foreign Language, including the internalization of cultural
connotations of lexical items, and as they apply more specifically to the acquisition of English for Special Purposes, purposes involving SeaSpeak and some of its functions in the affairs of sea traffic. We will proceed by means of an exploration of the small but representative history of English words denoting ‘sailor’, and in doing so portray something of the larger history of English nautical and other content lexemes and highlight some of the difficulties of ‘navigating’ the English word-hoard. Words for ‘sailor’ form an important set because the earliest speakers of what may be called ‘English’ were, or were descendants of, sea-faring people, and the sea has continued over the centuries to play a considerable role in the transportation affairs of speakers of the English language. Moreover, these words are relatively numerous as well as intriguingly varied in origin and in dialectal and registral distribution. Taken together, the English words signifying ‘sailor’ provide a revealing, longitudinal window on the diachrony of a key component of the Present Day English lexicon, a component, basic to SeaSpeak, which presents semasiological, morphological, and collocational challenges for even highly proficient speakerwriters of English.
Professor Newman’s academic background is in theoretical linguistics, and his research interests lie in English historical grammar and lexis, more specifically in Old and Middle English morphology and phonology as well as in medieval and modern English borrowing and dialectology. He is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Token: A Journal of English Linguistics. Professor Newman regularly attends international conferences on English historical linguistics, and he serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. At UTRGV, he teaches undergraduate courses in general linguistics and English grammar as well as graduate courses in the history of the English language, English phonology, and global varieties of English.
Ideologies and attitudes of language in early 20th century Texas printed media
The concepts of language ideologies and attitudes have been important when explaining the linguistic behaviors of individuals and social groups. Some fundamental notions of these concepts include the idea that our impressions and perceptions about language or languages are not entirely neutral and therefore do not occur in a social or contextual vacuum. Woolard (1998: 3) points to the link between language ideologies and other social aspects to argue that ideologies of language have implications beyond communication by defining our perceptions of identity (our own and that of others) and of what we value, aesthetically and morally. For this study I will consider two novels and two newspapers published in Spanish in the South Texas region during the first half of the 20th century to demonstrate three points about ideologies and attitudes about language. First, I will argue that theories about ideological discourse can be used to analyze these printed publications. As a second point, I will try to highlight the different types of ideologies that we find in novels and newspapers reproduced today applied to marginalized varieties and bilingual speech. Thirdly, I will try to expose how monoglossic ideologies, linguistic purism and standard language ideologies are applied in both types of printed publications.
Yanina Hernández is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics and a Teaching Assistant at the University of Houston. She earned a master's degree from the University of New Mexico and has been teaching for over 19 years. Her experience includes teaching Spanish as a Second Language and Spanish as a Heritage Language courses at the University of New Mexico, Texas Southern University, Houston Community College, Texas State Technical College, and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her research interests include Spanish as a heritage language, Spanish language acquisition, the development of OER material for Spanish language courses and Latino digital humanities projects.
Do our languages shape how we recruit phonology? Eye movements reveal bilingual listeners’ phonological units in spoken word recognition.
Dr. Yu-Cheng Lin is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of Texas Rio Grade Valley. He began his academic career by earning a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from University of Texas at El Paso in 2015. He has an interdisciplinary research program studying different aspects of language and cognitive processing in children and adults with diverse characteristics and backgrounds. Using mouse-tracking and eye-tracking methods, his research works show that bilingualism provides a tool for revealing the interplay between language and cognition that is otherwise obscure in speakers of one language alone.
“Hablo pocha, ¿no?”: Countering hegemonic language ideologies in the classroom and the community
In the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, language ideologies of linguistic purism have resulted in derogatory labels for Mexican American language varieties including pocho and mocho. More recently there have been a few examples of ‘reclaiming’ these terms through semantic inversion. While these terms are frequently referenced in research on language in the U.S. Southwest, to date there has been no in-depth study of how these terms are used and understood by Spanish-English bilinguals along the U.S.-Mexico border. This study analyzes the use of the terms pocho and mocho in two sociolinguistic corpora in South Texas (Corpus Bilingüe del Valle, Bessett & Christoffersen, 2019-) and Southern Arizona (Corpus de Español en el Sur de Arizona, Carvalho, 2012-). The study reveals both historically perjorative monoglossic ideologies of pocho/mocho and more positive instances of heteroglossic ideologies of pocho/mocho. Monoglossic ideological stances position pocho/mocho as 1) not speaking a language well, 2) not correct or imperfect, 3) ugly, and 4) harming, damaging or ruining Spanish. For instance, Tania states, "They don't speak it. They assassinate it." On the other hand, heteroglossic ideological stances represent pocho/mocho as 5) a marker of solidarity and instrumental, 6) bilingual competence and ability, 7) identity and language pride, 8) meaningful, and 9) cultured, cool, and unique. In one excerpt, Eduardo states powerfully, "It's our pocho dialect y nos entendemos” ('…and we understand each other'). This discourse analysis demonstrates how language ideologies of pocho/mocho are enacted but also contested by bilinguals in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and by extension, how such ideologies reflect power asymmetries.
For the purpose of this talk at UTRGV’s Linguistic Seminar Series, I will further detail the CoBiVa corpus and its incorporation into various B3 courses with the ‘culturally sustaining pedagogy’ designation as well as the newly developed B3 Scholar Seal. I also describe findings from another study on student perspectives in working with the corpus in these community engaged scholarship classes. Finally, I discuss how this study, the corpus, and the classes contribute to a B3 linguistics at UTRGV, as this is the first talk in the new sub-series of ‘B3 Linguistics’ marking a collaboration between the Writing & Language Studies Department’s linguistics faculty and the B3 Institute.
Katherine Christoffersen is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Writing & Language Studies at UTRGV. She is also the Associate Director of the B3 Institute and an affiliate in the Mexican American Studies program. Dr. Christoffersen holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching from the University of Arizona and a masters in English Language/Linguistics from the University of Arizona. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language learning. She has experience teaching a variety of courses related to sociolinguistics, including topics such as border languages, sociolinguistics, language and culture, and discourse analysis.
Linguistic landscapes in the Rio Grande Valley: McAllen, Texas
The purpose of this presentation is to share an undergraduate research project conducted in the spring 2023 semester to fulfill requirements for the course ENGL 3370 Language & Culture class that aimed to observe and analyze the presence of languages in the Rio Grande Valley through the documentation of linguistic landscapes. Linguistic landscapes refer to languages displayed on signs in public spaces, such as advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration (Cenoz & Gorter, 2006). The project seeks to identify what languages other than English are being used in public spaces in the Rio Grande Valley and what other things they can reveal about the region. Previous studies on linguistic landscapes have been conducted in other areas, such as the linguistic landscape of a Malaysian border town and plurilingual posters in a multilingual city (McKiernan, 2019; Zhang, 2016). These studies have shown that linguistic landscapes can reveal a lot about their location, from languages being used to the kind of environment around that area to the people that visit those locations. An implication of this presentation is that linguistic landscapes projects can be helpful in language-oriented courses at UTRGV to give undergraduate students practice on how to document languages in the Rio Grande Valley and analyze the linguistic landscape of the region.
Perla Reyes is 23 years old and was born in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico. She graduated this Spring 2023 semester from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, earning a BA degree in English with a concentration in English Language Arts and Reading. She is currently working as an English Second Language Teacher at Universidad del Atlántico, Campus Tampico. In addition to her current career, Perla is also a member of the Rio Grande Valley Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind.
Translating with AI: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Since artificial intelligence emerged on the global scene some months ago, the hype around ChatGPT has reached fever pitch. Some people see AI-based tools as promising game changers with the potential to revolutionize the way we teach, study and work. Others caution that their flaws may still outweigh their potential benefits. For us in the Translation Studies, this is not a new conversation.
In our field, we have been facing a similar situation since machine translation (e.g. Google Translate, DeepL and so on) was made available to the general public. Since the early 2000s, computers have been doing translation work that had traditionally been performed by humans and, in recent years, machine translation has reached unprecedented quality levels. But what exactly does this mean? How well do machines translate? Can we trust Google Translate or ChatGPT to translate for us? In this presentation I will tackle these questions. I will first explain what happens in the backstage when we ask our devices for a translation. Then, through several examples, I will discuss the main strengths and weaknesses of automated translation, its reliability and I will also address the elephant in the room: in a scenario in which machine translation, artificial intelligence and deep learning technologies evolve at a steady pace, is there a future for human translators and linguists?
Dr. Nazaret Fresno is an Associate Professor of Spanish Translation and Interpreting and the Associate Chair of the department of Writing & Language Studies at UTRGV. She holds an MA in Literary Translation, an MA in Audiovisual Translation and a PhD in Translation Studies. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses including Translation Theory, Healthcare Translation and Interpreting, Audiovisual Translation, and Translation Technologies. Her research interests include website localization, audiovisual translation (translation for dubbing and subtitling) and media accessibility (especially, live closed captioning).
A Glimpse of China: Language and Culture in Contrast to Its English Counterpart
As one of the four ancient civilizations, China has a history dating back over 5,000 years. It attracts people’s attention with its unique and colorful culture. This talk, from the perspective of language contrast, helps you lift a corner of its mystery veil. It mainly, based on the fact that language is the carrier of culture, leads you to the lexical features of Chinese language as well as the syntactic features and thought patterns in contrast to the English language and culture.
Ms. Zhihong Chen, an associate professor of Shanghai Institute Technology, is currently a research scholar of the department of Writing & Language Studies at UTRGV, supervised by Dr. Yongkang Wei. She teaches both English major and non-English major courses as linguistics, intensive reading, stylistics, etc. Her research interests focus on pragmatics, narratology and cultural studies.
Typology: Linguistic Universals and Variation
In spite of the vast variation in the roughly 6000 human languages that we know of, there are some universal patterns and design features. Typology investigates the existence of universals and the limits of variations in human language, whether that be in sound, word structure, or sentence structure. It allows us to see similarities in languages that may be totally unrelated in terms of language family. It also reveals patterns of predictable correlations of features, showing that structural features of a language are not combined randomly. This talk will give a small taste of the types of features that have been identified for encoding core functions of human language: relating participants to an action or state (word order), expressing location in time and space (tense), and keeping track of who is doing what (pronouns and case). A look at the range of sounds found in human language will also be included.
Dr. Sheila Dooley received her doctorate in linguistics from Lund University, Sweden, specializing in syntax and verb-initial languages. She did post-doctoral research on Maori at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and taught typology, syntax, and general linguistics there and later at the University of Arizona. She is an Associate Professor in the Writing and Language Studies department at UTRGV and is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of Liberal Arts.