Featured Scholar - February 2020

What are you watching/streaming?
Well, we don't have a TV so we don't watch too many movies or shows (we watch them on my laptop). At the moment we're really not watching anything. We just watched Klaus not too long ago- fantastic movie. The only consistent thing I streamed all fall was watching my Philadelphia Eagles. Fly Eagles Fly!

What games are you playing?
Hmm... none at the moment. My wife and I like to walk and hike (that counts, right?) Interpreting quite literally the question on "games", we love going to Texas Tech basketball games. I've always enjoyed college b-ball, grew up watching Villanova basketball, and it's been amazing to see Coach Beard and these brilliant young men put TTU and Lubbock on the map. Wreck em Tech! Also, the track and field teams here at Tech are fantastic to watch. They have some incredible talent on their teams.

What are you listening to?
I've been alternating between Jarabe de Palo, Chambao, Maná, Jon Foreman, the Spiderman Into the Spider-verse Soundtrack, Springsteen, and Leon Bridges depending upon how I'm feeling. If we have the speakers up in our house, it varies: Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, T. Swift, Black Panther Soundtrack, etc. Other than that, I listen to a lot of Philadelphia sports radio to keep up with my Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers. In terms of podcasts I listen to The Liturgist as well High Hopes: A Phillies Podcast.

What are you reading?
I'm reading Harry Potter 3: The Prison of Azkaban. I just finished the 1st and 2nd book. My wife has been telling me for years how much I would like the Harry Potter books. And wow, she couldn't have been more right, they are fantastic! I suppose I'm only about 20 plus years late on this cultural phenomenon. Figures that I started watching Game of Thrones right as season 8 started. And of course, I'm reading a lot of sociolinguistics articles looking at language variation and change.

What are you writing/thinking about?
I'm working on a few articles that deal with sociolinguistic variation of Andalusian Spanish and Texas Spanish. I'm interested in how language varies per social factors (i.e. what phonetic changes are happening and who are the leaders of these changes). I'm equally as interested in the social meaning of linguistic variation. That is, how listeners evaluate different linguistic variants (social perceptions). I'm particularly interested in Texas Spanish- the linguistic variation due to language and dialect contact as well the social perceptions surrounding it and its speakers. Thanks to a generous TTU Humanities Center grant, I'm working on a project "The Spanish of Lubbock" that documents and promotes locally spoken bilingual Spanish.

I've also been thinking a lot about getting more undergraduates at Texas Tech interested in linguistics, particularly in Spanish.