Research Focus
In a nutshell, what causes people to change the way they talk and how can linguists explain that in a way that makes sense to non-linguists? Also, what can hand puppets tell us about what people think about language variation?
My research focuses on (a) the things that happen in the performance of a dialect and (b) the speech of gay men, lesbians, and trans* people. I do most of my fieldwork by asking university students to play-act with hand puppets. Students are a fascinating group negotiating emerging adulthood, radical shifts in social networks, and drastic intermixing of social class all at the same time. And hand puppets are a great way to get people to perform "a dialect"...
Key Words:
Performance, Sociolinguistics, Queer Linguistics, Intertextuality, Digital Humanities & Linguistics, Perception & Categorization, Emerging Adulthood, Dialect Contact & Accommodation,
Language Variation & Change, Literary Representation of Dialect, Public Understanding of Linguistics
The San Diego Project
The San Diego Sociolinguistics Documentation Project (“The San Diego Project”) is as an on-going research program that records, describes, and analyzes the unique sociolinguistic make up of the greater San Diego community.
The San Diego Project is connected to the San Diego Speaks! website, where both linguists and non-linguists can follow our research, have a look at our findings, and engage in discussion and debate with the scholars onboard.
Related papers and presentations are noted in red, below.
Are you living in or around San Diego and interested in participating?
E-mail me: douglas.s.bigham@gmail.com
Sexuality in Language
Social scholars have long recognized that gender is not equivalent to biological sex. Gender is a social construction—a category incorporating inequalities in social access, mobility, and the expression of one’s sexual being—the interaction of pervasively different social histories, freedoms, and sanctions.
But while linguists know that gender influences the way people speak, most research continues to use only the labels “male” and “female” to describe a speaker’s gender, excluding any contribution of sexuality to our identities. Meanwhile, research that does cover sexuality languishes in the academic ghetto of “queer studies”—studies set apart from “normal” research, excepted as something you only consider if you’re explicitly investigating “queer people”.
My work tries to break free from this old model, showing the unique contributions to language variation that gay, lesbian, and trans people make every day, even when sexual identity isn’t the focus.
Related papers and presentations are noted in pink, below.
Gay, lesbian, or trans and in your 20s/30s or 60s/70s? I’d love to interview you!
E-mail me: douglas.s.bigham@gmail.com
Texas English Project
From January 2009 to August 2010 I was the Project Manager for the Texas English Project, a large-scale linguistic database and educational programming initiative under the direction of Professor Lars Hinrichs in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
While I was with the TEP, my collaborators and research assistants included:
Lars Hinrichs, Jessica White-Sustaíta, Kathleen Shaw Points, Patrick Schultz, Natalie Jung, Chris Spradling, and Rohan Ravishankar.
Related papers and presentations are noted in orange, below.
Books & Monographs
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2008)
Dialect Contact and Accommodation
among Emerging Adults in a University Setting.Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, August 2008
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) is a site of linguistic diversity where speakers of three major dialects of American English—Northern, Midland, and Southern—are brought into contact with one another. The speech of undergraduates at SIUC is subject to the processes of dialect contact and accommodation; as a result, regional speech features are lost in favor of an overarching SIUC dialect norm or koiné.
The linguistic contact that takes place at SIUC is unique. Previous studies of dialect contact involve situations created by migrations of large populations of settlers moving to a new area. These “migrants” settle permanently in the new area and become isolated from their original anchor dialects. The dialect mixture that arises from countless single instances of interpersonal accommodation will, under many circumstances, lead to koinéization or new dialect formation. However, the dialect contact situation at SIUC is different from these previous studies. First, the contact situation at SIUC is made up of fluid populations of highly mobile individuals—undergraduates. While the groups in contact remain consistent, individual student comprising the populations of these groups come and go every year. Additionally, rather than permanently relocating, the contact between the different groups at SIUC is interrupted by students leaving for three months of summer break and one month of winter break every year, thereby preventing speakers of the displaced dialects from becoming isolated from their original anchor dialects. The presence of these factors at SIUC provides a way to test and expand our existing models of language use and language attitudes in regards to dialect contact, accommodation, self- and group-categorization, and individual- and community-level notions of linguistic variation and language change.
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2005)
The Movement of Front Vowel Allophones Before Nasals
in Southern Illinois White Vernacular English (The PIN~PEN Merger).Master of Arts Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, August 2005
This work considers the merger of the allophones of the KIT and DRESS vowels before nasals, commonly called the PIN~PEN merger. Vowel tokens from twenty speakers in Southern Illinois are sampled; statistical information and vowel graphs, based on F1 measurements, are generated for discussion. While the majority of these Southern Illinois speakers do show the PIN~PEN merger, there is a wide range of variation in the ways and degrees that each individual speaker participates in the merger. Data on pre-nasal allophones of the TRAP vowel are also included, and the effect of the PIN~PEN merger on pre-nasal TRAP is examined. The possibility of a change in progress, from a PIN~PEN merger to a PEN~PAN merger is considered. The data reported here provide an important link between the phonetics literature and the sociolinguistic/dialectology literature on the effect of nasals on preceding vowels.
Articles & Essays
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2012).
Emerging Adulthood in Sociolinguistics.
Language & Linguistics Compass 6(8): 533-544.
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2012).
The Evolutionary-Emergence Model of Language Change.
In: De Vogelaer, Gunther & Guido Seiler (eds.). The Dialect Lab: Using Dialects as a Testing Ground for Theories of Language Change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ch.2, pp. 33-52.
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2010).
Mechanisms of Accommodation among Emerging Adults in a University Setting.
Journal of English Linguistics 38: 193-210.
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2009).
Correlation of the Low-Back Vowel Merger and TRAP-Retraction
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 15: Iss. 2, Article 4.
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Bigham, Douglas S. (2003).
Dude, What was I Talking About?:
A New Sociolinguistic Framework for Marijuana Intoxicated Speech.Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Symposium About Language and Society — Austin. University of Texas at Austin. Texas Linguistic Forum 45, 11-21.
Invited Presentations
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Digital Humanities & Digital Literacy.
(2015, 19th May). Invited lightening talk for the "ReBoot 2.0" Digital Humanities colloquium. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA.
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Digital Literacy in Linguistics.
(2012, 12th May). Presentation at the Center for Teaching & Learning's Digital Pedagogy Showcase – Digital Communication Across The Curriculum. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA.
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Queer Accents & Linguistic Identity.
(2014, 15th April). Invited talk for the LGBTQ Research Consortium. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA.
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The Role of Sexuality in the Construction of Gender.
(2011, 7th May). Keynote Address at the Hunter Undergraduate Linguistics & Language Conference (HULLS). Hunter College, New York.
*abstract *presentation *handout
This presentation focused on the absolute necessity of incorporating speaker sexuality into all aspects of linguistic research. As linguists we can no longer afford to ignore sexuality as a crucial aspect of speaker identity, regardless of whether we're studying sexuality per se or not.
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The PIN~PEN Vowel Merger in Southern Illinois English.
(2007, 10th September). UT Linguistics Colloquium – Austin, TX.
This is a version of my NWAV33 talk (below). This version is slightly condensed and revised.
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Dialects! (and such…)
(2007, 6th February). Guest Presentation for J.M. Fuller’s LING 415 course at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale.
This talk focused on the history of dialectology and its functions and use in current sociolinguistic research.
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Klingon 101: Linguistics via Constructed Languages.
(2006, 4th March). Explore UT, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
I was invited to give this presentation during UT's "Explore UT" Open House to describe the academics behind the "Klingon..." course I taught.
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What Might Might Could Be in Might Could.
(1999, April). SIUC Linguistics Luncheon – Carbondale, IL.
An investigation of double modal usage among Southern Illinois English speakers. Naturally occurring data and speaker grammaticality judgements for positive and negative data are included. The overall emphasis of the presentation is that might in might could is best analyzed as an adverbial. This analysis is further supported by the pragmatic uses of double modals in natural speech.
Collaborations
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Indexing Chill: GOOSE, GOAT, and Bro-Dudes of the Urban Southwest
(2015, January). Poster presentation at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting at LSA, Portland, OR.
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From Jeff Spicoli to Woody Wooderson: Chill Bro-Dudes, GOOSE, GOAT, and the Urban Southwest.
(2014, October). Poster presentation at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 43, Chicago, IL.
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Ethnicity & the Meaning of Sound Change in Central Texas
(2010, November). Panel: Variation and Change in Texas English. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 39, San Antonio, TX.
In Austin, Texas, variation in the GOOSE vowel is linked to speaker ethnicity and used surfaces in conversation as an index of local identity.
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Apparent-Time Low Vowels among Mexican-Americans and Anglos
in Austin, Texas.(2010, January). American Dialect Society Annual Meeting at LSA, Baltimore, MD.
The TRAP, LOT, THOUGHT, and PRICE vowels are investigated among Mexican-Americans and Anglo-Americans in Central Texas. We find sound changes among these vowels are being led by both ethnic groups, depending on the particular vowel.
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Apparent-Time Low Vowels among Mexican-Americans and Anglos
in Austin, Texas.(2009, October). New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 38, Ottawa, Canada.
The TRAP, LOT, THOUGHT, and PRICE vowels are investigated among Mexican-Americans and Anglo-Americans in Central Texas. We find sound changes among these vowels are being led by both ethnic groups, depending on the particular vowel.
Conference Talks
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Rethinking Digital Humanities & Linguistics.
(2015, January). Part of the Popularizing Linguistics through New Media datablitz panel at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America, Portland, OR.
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Punks, Queers, and Anarchists: Linguistic Variation from the Outside.
(2014, October). Poster presentation at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 43, Chicago, IL.
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Naïve Categorization of American English Vowels.
(2014, August). Methods in Dialectology XV, Groningen, Netherlands.
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Linguistic Variation among Emerging Adults at Three US Universities.
(2013, October). Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood 6th Biennial Conference (6CEA), Chicago, IL.
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Southwestern US English: Indexing "Local" Identity in Dialect Contact Settings via Performance Speech.
(2013, September). Fifth International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (ICLCE 5), Austin, TX.
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Reconsidering Vowels as Mathematical and Statistical Entities: How Much Variation Should There Be?
(2011, January). American Dialect Society Annual Meeting at LSA, Pittsburg, PA.
Although we tend to treat vowels as statistical entites in our analyses, they are not—they are perceptual entities. This talk makes the case that we should reconsider and perhaps alter some of our most basic sociophonetic methods in the interest of a truly linguistics-based analysis of vowels.
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Naïve Categorization of American English Vowels
(2011, January). Poster presentation at the annual meeting of the
Linguistics Society of America, Pittsburg, PA.*abstract *poster (large 50Mb file!)
How would speakers with no prior knowledge of phonetic categories group vowels sounds?
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Operationalizing Sexuality within Sociolinguistic Variation
(2010, November). New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 39, San Antonio, TX.
By recognizing that gender is a compositional category of both sex and sexuality, we see that gay men and lesbians do not participate in linguistic variation in necessarily the same ways as their straight counterparts.
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Northern California Vowels in Southern Illinois.
(2009, January). American Dialect Society Annual Meeting at LSA, Anaheim, CA.
The vowel space of speaker from Southern Illinois is considered in light of recent descriptions of Southern Californian vowel space.
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The Correlation of the Low-Back Vowel Merger and /æ/-Retraction.
(2008, November). Poster Presentation at New Ways of Analyzing Variation
(NWAV) 37, Houston, TX.This poster provides an explict test of Gordon's (2005) hypothesis that TRAP-retraction follows automatically from participation in the COT-CAUGHT merger.
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The Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Variation in a Transition Zone.
(2008, August). Special Workshop Session at
Methods in Dialectology XIII – Leeds, UK.A first formalization of the evolutionary-emergence model of linguistic variation and language change. Using data from my dissertation fieldwork, I show how dialect contact provides evidence that language is an emergent system. Dialect contact does not introduce novel linguistic variants so much as it re-enforces previously existing outlier forms.
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On the Importance of Standardized Word List Data in Dialectology Research.
(2008, August). Methods in Dialectology XIII – Leeds, United Kingdom.
Using the COT~CAUGHT merger as a backdrop, this work shows how data collected from standardized word list recitations play a crucial role in understanding the mechanisms of linguistic variation and language change. The differences between findings based on interview speech and word list recitations are presented.
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Sexuality as a Factor for Sociolinguistic Variation.
(2008, July). IGALA5 – Wellington, New Zealand.
Gender categories that incorporate sexuality must be incorporated into work on linguistic variation. Briefly, though “women” are often said to lead language change, when both sex and sexuality are considered, it appears that gay men actually lead language change, followed by women, followed by straight men and lesbians.
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Vowel Variation in Southern Illinois.
(2007, January). Meeting of the American Dialect Society at the Annual Meeting
of the Linguistic Society of America – Anaheim, CA.The first presentation of vowel variation among emerging adults in Southern Illinois. This work presents an overview of the “Southern Illinois English” vowel system.
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On the Fringes:
Bridging Sociophonetics and Social Psychology in Southern Illinois.(2006, October). NWAV 35 – Columbus, OH.
This was an early report from my dissertation fieldwork where I correlate scores on attitude surveys with formant frequencies in vowel variation. The findings presented at NWAV35 have since been revised and it seems that report here is a bit over-optimistic. I have included this information for the sake of completeness.
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Copula Variation in Southern Illinois White Vernacular English.
(2005, April). SECOL LXXII – Raleigh, NC.
Among speakers in Southern Illinois, the “be” verb in stative-deictic constructions can be completely regularized, taking 3rd sg. -s and past -ed. Stative-deictic constructions are those statements where heightened attention or focus is place on a person’s state, such as “You always get to be the thimble in Monopoly”. In Southern Illinois English, we find regularized constructions such as “He always bes red in checkers”; “I always be Princess in Marioparty”; and “I beed the cop last time, it’s your turn.” As these examples show, this regularized "be" is much more common in role-playing scenarios (e.g., as a replacement for the “get to be” construction), though it is not restricted to these contexts.
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Dude, Let’s Go Shopping: The Performance of Gay and Straight Speech.
(2005, February). GLS2005: The Language & Identity Tapestry – Washington, DC.
This is the first presentation I gave of my “sock puppet research”. Using sock puppets, dyads performed a conflict resolution scenario, once as if their characters were straight men and once as if their characters were gay men. Dyads of homosexual men, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women performed. In a nutshell, though “gay” is the more marked male identity, performances of “straight men” were overall more cohesive and more similar across dyads than performances of “gay men”.
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The PIN~PEN Vowel Merger in Southern Illinois English.
(2004, October). NWAV 33 – Ann Arbor, MI.
This work focuses on the merger of pre-nasal allophones of KIT, DRESS, and TRAP among speakers of “Southern Illinois English”. I show that although the PIN~PEN merger is typically described as a subsuming of DRESS by KIT, the reality is much more complicated, with merged forms of PIN~PEN taking on a variety of phonetic values from [ɪ] to [ɛ]. Data from pre-nasal forms of the TRAP vowel [æ], as in the word PAN, are also included.
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Dude, What was I Talking About?:
A New Sociolinguistic Framework for Marijuana Intoxicated Speech.(2002, April). SALSA X – Austin, TX.
Discourse analysis research on the speech of intoxicated subjects. I found that the speech of marijuana intoxicated (“stoned”) subjects, in terms of topic management and turn-taking strategies, is more similar to the speech of meetings than the speech of “normal” conversations among un-intoxicated (“sober”) subjects.