02 Feb Intonational Variation Beyond Black and White: Language and Identity in the Speech of Biracial Men
Nicole Holliday (Linguistics, Pomona College)
Thursday, February 2, 2017 / 3:30 PM
3605 South Hall
Dr. Nicole Holliday is a Mellon Chau Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College. Holliday’s research is in sociolinguistics, specifically, how individuals interact with language to conceptualize and construct identity of both self and others. She is especially interested in how individuals who cross traditional racial/ethnic boundaries reflect multiple social identities through linguistic practices. Specifically, her current research examines the use of intonation and suprasegmental features that speakers may employ in the performance of their ethnic identities, as well as the ways in which these features act as cues for listeners in making ethnicity judgments. She is also interested in the ways in which political figures may alter patterns of language use to perform different types of identities in order to appeal to constituents. The focus of her dissertation, under the guidance of Professor Renee Blake at New York University, was intra- and interspeaker prosodic variation in the sociolinguistic behavior of American black/biracial young men.
Reception to follow at 3607 South Hall.
Sponsored by the Department of Communication, the Department of Education, the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Sociology, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.