Linguistics Seminar Series
Fall 2024
We are thrilled to announce the Linguistics Seminar Series for the Spring 2024 semester. The Linguistics Seminar Series features faculty scholars who are involved in language-related research. The series is co-sponsored by the Department of Writing & Language Studies and the Office for Bilingual Integration.
The presentations will be hosted each Tuesday from 12:30-1:45pm in Edinburg (EACSB 1.106), Brownsville (BBRHB 1.222) and via Zoom. We provide pizza and soda for in-person attendees. Check the flyer or contact john.foreman@utrgv.edu for Zoom information.
This semester includes a special guest speake who will visit the Edinburg campus on Oct. 29.
Please join us this Fall semester as we learn from and with our featured speakers!
Upcoming Events
Demography and Language Variation
Dr. Guy Bailey is the founding President of The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is also a sociolinguist. He continues to do research on language change and variation. He is the author of over 100 books and articles, and his research has been featured in a front-page article in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, on CNN Headline News, on BBC Radio, in Texas Monthly, and in the San Antonio Express News. Since 1984, Bailey has brought in over $1 million in external funding for his research.
Unlearning linguistic shame among mixed-heritage Japanese learners through collective healing and storytelling
Research on heritage learner populations has underscored feelings of linguistic insecurity and shame, linked to histories of distress and trauma as central factors affecting classroom emotions and learning outcomes (Driver, 2024). In the case of mixed-heritage individuals (MHIs), this insecurity and shame is also impacted by monoracial ideologies, which often pressure MHIs to “prove” their ethnic heritage through linguistic or cultural knowledge when an interlocuter wishes to categorize them into a “monoracial” group (Tsai, 2021). For example, MHIs have reported episodes of teasing, disappointment from family members, or accusations of lying about their ethnic heritage when they were unable to speak their heritage language with the same accent or fluency as a “monoracial” native speaker. To help liberate minoritized language learners from mainstream ideologies that portray their bodies, behaviors, and language practices as deficient, research from critical applied linguistics and feminist psychology has advocated the importance of safe spaces, critical dialogue and experience sharing. However, little is understood about how such conversational interactions may succeed or fail at helping them heal from internalized racism and linguicism. To this end, this study examines conversations between Japanese MHIs during an online language-exchange, and explores how interactive storytelling provided opportunities for them to heal from internalized shame related to their racial appearance and language practices. Using narrative analysis (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008), I will present ways MHIs reinforced a safe space and co-constructed the evaluation of their stories in ways that led them to recognize injustice and feel pride or empowerment towards their language practices. This presentation concludes by discussing implications for supporting students with second language anxiety or shame within and outside classrooms.
Aurora Tsai is a Project Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo in the Center for Global Education. Her interests lie in language and identity, raciolinguistics, translanguaging, decoloniality, and critical language pedagogies, focusing primarily on the experiences of multicultural and/or multiethnic language users. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development, the Journal of Identity, Language, and Education, and the ELT Journal.
A Bilingual Republic? Texas 1836-1846
My work examines to what degree Texas was a “bilingual republic” during its decade of independence. Today, the Texas school curriculum (TEKS) and textbooks, public history sites, and museum exhibits highlight the importance of Tejanos such as Juan Seguín and José Antonio Navarro in the Texas Revolution and Republic. However, the participation of Tejanos in the governance of Texas was highly contingent on linguistic inclusion and the place of Spanish in the Republic. Through examining legislative records, I trace the trajectory of language policy in Texas from 1836 to 1845. After a promising beginning as a “bilingual republic” with significant funding for translation and interpreting from 1836 through 1840, Texas cut this spending and largely marginalized Spanish from 1841 to 1845. I examine the impact the rise and fall of bilingual policies had on individual political careers and the larger standing of the Spanish-speaking community. My ongoing work also considers the careers of interpreters, who often faced questions of competence and loyalty as they mediated ethnic and linguistic divides.
Jamie Starling is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. A 2012 doctoral graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso, his dissertation and previous publications focused primarily on the role of Roman Catholic Clergy and missions, cross-cultural relations, and family life in the region. He offers graduate and undergraduate courses on United States, Texas, and Borderlands history, and is also the coordinator of the history department’s graduate studies programs.
Nuestros testimonios: La experiencia SHL en UTSA
This presentation brings together instructors and students in the UTSA Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) Program as well as from La Comunidad, the student organization sponsored by the SHL Program. Through testimonios, students and instructors will share their experiences within the SHL program, highlighting how it has shaped their linguistic and cultural identities as well as their academic paths. Presenters will discuss the challenges that they have faced and the opportunities that both the SHL Program and La Comunidad have provided for growth. By sharing our testimonios, we aim to shed light on the vital role of heritage language education in not only empowering students (and instructors) but also fostering inclusive, supportive academic environments. Join us to explore the SHL experience at UTSA!
Stephanie Brock González is an Assistant Professor of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures and the Director of the Spanish as a Heritage Language Program at UT San Antonio. She has taught SHL classes throughout the US Southwest for nearly 15 years and is currently launching a program to train MA students to teach SHL classes. Currently, her work focuses on updating the SHL curriculum to be student-centered and include place-and-asset-based approaches as well as connections within the local communities.
The effect of language contact on variational patterns of US Spanish: Insights from mood selection
Documenting the Language of the Rio Grande Valley in Sociolinguistics Classes: Community Engaged Scholarship & Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy.
Bilingual advertising, visual rhetoric and persuasion: beyond grammar and meaning
The marginalized as central: The impact of Hispanic vernaculars in advancing scholarship in Linguistics and beyond.
While their speakers are all too often racialized and minoritized, investigations of marginalized speech forms have availed critical insights for scholarship in all subfields of Linguistics, to include structural linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the sociology of language. In this presentation, I survey my decades-long research programs to highlight studies on the phonological and morpho-syntactic variation attested in my native Hispanophone Caribbean variety, and on the borrowing, calquing, and code-switching attested in bilingual Spanish-English speech in the United States. These works have revealed robust patterns of linguistic continuity and variation, underscoring the importance of speakers’ socialization to broader understandings of language acquisition and mental representation, as well as of the dissemination, perception, and performance of particular phenomena in signaling social identities and incipient language change. The talk additionally offers directions for endeavors in general and Hispanic Linguistics and in allied disciplines such as Ethnic Studies and Speech Sciences & Technologies, and, equally importantly, it highlights efforts in teaching and mentoring that center marginalized varieties and their speakers towards diversifying the academy.
Exploring individual variation in Spanish-English bilinguals’ phonological processing of /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɑ/-/æ/ contrasts.
Embracing Diversity: Culturally Relevant Approaches to Mathematics Tasks
U.S. K-12 institutions continue to have a more culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse student population, with Hispanic and Asian students increasing in record numbers. As a result, K-12 teachers, including mathematics teachers, are expected more than ever to design, select, and implement mathematical tasks to address the needs of diverse students. Rich mathematical tasks that incorporate culturally relevant assets offer promise in meeting such demands. However, both preservice teachers (PSTs) and in-service teachers often lack sufficient opportunities to engage with and learn how to incorporate such instructional approaches. In response to this, our team of mathematics teacher educators and PSTs engaged in designing mathematical tasks that are rich and culturally relevant to Hispanic students living in the local area. We outline the process we followed to incorporate the authentic experiences of diverse students into mathematical tasks, providing insights into how educators can avoid overgeneralizations about specific cultural practices through critical and respectful discussions.
Dr. Luis M. Fernández aims to make a lasting impact on the education community at all levels. Growing up in the bilingual Rio Grande Valley (RGV) of Texas, his passion for improving mathematics education, particularly for Emergent Bilingual (EB) Latina/o/x students, drives his work. He focuses on developing instructional resources and professional development for educators to help EB students enhance both English acquisition and content learning. Additionally, he explores disparities in college students' math proficiency, including the need for developmental courses and equitable instruction methods, such as specifications grading in Calculus. His commitment centers on advancing educational equity, especially in mathematics.
Fantasmas, fronteras y milagros: Ghost Smuggling Corridos and the Undocumented Migrant Experience
Since the early 2000s, musical testimonios have been circulating social media platforms marked by themes of persecution, devotion, and survival centered on an apparition who migrants testify smuggles them safely across the U.S.-Mexico border. This phenomenon of corrido (ballad) composition, which I define as corridos de coyotes fantasma, narrates the near-death experiences of migrants and their miraculous encounters with the ghost of Saint Toribio Romo, adopted by migrants as el Santo Coyote and unofficial Patron Saint of Immigrants. Saint Toribio Romo was a young priest killed in Jalisco during La Cristiada, the 1926-1929 armed rebellion of Cristerosagainst the Mexican government. For migrants unable to return on pilgrimage to honor him at his shrine in Jalisco, corridos serve as musical votives that they share with devotees and future border-crossing survivors on YouTube, a space that defies geopolitical borders. Drawing on Derrida’s terminology and conceptualization of “hauntology,” as well as discourse on immigration politics in migrant religious expression, I analyze how these corridos transcend temporal and physical boundaries, marked by multiple layers of haunting. I explore how these corridos – a musical tradition most associated with Mexico’s revolutionary past – embody cultural memory of historical traumas of persecution, serving as haunting testimony of individuals forced to live invisibly as “ghosts” to avoid apprehension and survive.
Dr. Teresita D. Lozano is an Assistant Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. A native of the El Paso, Texas – Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua borderland, Dr. Lozano engages in research that explores the relationship between music, migration, religion, cultural memory, and identity. Her current monograph project centers on corridos de coyotes fantasma (“ghost smuggling ballads”) and their significance as musical manifestations of the undocumented migrant experience in the U.S.-Mexico transborder region. A passionate advocate for musical and community activism, she has served as a performer and Borderland music specialist for projects in public education and immigrant rights movements, including Motus Theater’s UndocuAmerica and UndocuMonologues. Prior to her position at UTRGV, she served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ethnomusicology at West Virginia University. She was previously awarded the prestigious Charlotte Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for research centered on religion and ethics. She is also an alumna of the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Museum Studies Program where she worked in residence as a graduate fellow for the Smithsonian Latino Center. Dr. Lozano holds a BME with an emphasis in flutefrom Baylor University and a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology (Musicology) from the University of Colorado Boulder.