Language and Sexuality: I'm interested in the connections between language and identity: specifically, the way that sexuality affects language production and perception. Investigating primarily the speech patterns of gay-identified American men, I am ultimately looking at the motivations for and the processes of the acquisition of gay-sounding features. To this end, I am currently investigating representations in popular American media of gay-sounding speech: both in recent blockbuster films and in the stand-up comedy routines of non-gay-identified white American men.
Language Attitudes: Additionally, I am fascinated by the immigrant experience and particularly that of Asian-Americans. I am working on two tangentially related projects. The first seeks to determine the effect of perceived language-learner ethnicity on native-speakers' judgments of students' L2 production. The second project aims at explicit language attitudes of American Born Chinese and American Born Palestinians in the U.S towards expected competency in the heritage language as well as other aspects of cultural literacy.
Other Broad Research Interests: sociophonetics language and gender; ethnicity language policy and planning; maintenance and shift language and the law