LSA Forums – March 2026 – Dr. Hou – Language Ideologies in American Sign Language Research

Lina Hou (she/they) is a signed language linguist. She is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Linguistics Department at University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin and did her postdoctoral fellowship in Communications at University of California, San Diego.

LSA Forums – Feb 2026 Edition – Dr. Dinkin – Local Attitudes, Dialect Perception, and Dialect Change in a Tourist Town

Aaron Dinkin is an associate professor of Linguistics at SDSU. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, under the supervision of William Labow, and has also held faculty positions at Swarthmore College and the University of Toronto. His research centers on sound change in dialects of American English, especially in upstate New York.

LSA Forums – October 2025 Edition

Dr. Magdolna Lehmann is our October speaker. As a language testing expert, she is the chair of the national organization called “Hungarian Accreditation Board for Foreign Language Examinations.” Dr. Lehmann is an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Pécs, Hungary. Her presentation topic is “Corpora and Vocabulary Testing in a Foreign Language Environment: The Case of Hungary.”

New event! Talk by Dr. Austin German (UChicago) on 4/16

Please join us for an in-person event in the Linguistics conference room (SHW 237) on Wednesday, 4/16 at 11am! We are delighted to have Dr. Austin German, post-doctoral researcher at UChicago, give a talk titled, “The impact of interaction on lexical and sub-lexical variation in Zinacantec Family Homesign.” Please see the flyer below for the talk abstract and more details!

Announcing our keynote speaker for the 48th Annual Linguistics Colloquium

We are honored to welcome Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza, Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics at UC Riverside, as our keynote speaker for the 48th Annual Linguistics Colloquium, which will take place on April 25th. Please see the abstract for the keynote address below, and stay tuned for more details about the event!

Critical Sociocultural Linguistic Literacy (CriSoLL): Transformative and Liberating Spanish Language Research and Education – Keynote address by Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza

This presentation provides an overview of the Critical Sociocultural Linguistics Literacy (CriSoLL) theoretical and pedagogical approach. It also presents CriSoLL background research consisting of results from sociolinguistic studies investigating different degrees of linguistic awareness among Latinx Spanish-English bilinguals and Spanish Heritage Language learners that vary generationally and across different categories of stigmatized Mexican Spanish elements. These findings suggest the importance of promoting symbolic competence and critical literacy among Spanish language researchers, educators, and students regarding how language and power structures operate.