Heritage Languages and IdentityPrimarily, my research focuses on the connections between heritage languages and identity. Within this broad scope, I maintain the greatest focus on translanguaging; heritage language acquisition, education, and maintenance; heritage language policy; and language reclamation efforts. This research is mostly conducted via an ethnographic approach as well as interviews with stakeholders. Currently, the policy aspect of my research focuses on the development of heritage language policy, which was the focus of the book I co-edited with Dr. Sheena Shah (Heritage Language Policies around the World, 2017). In all of my work related to language policy, the overarching goal of my research is to support the rights of minority language communities in learning, maintaining, and using their languages, and to help policy makers understand the connection between language and identity. Relatedly, I work with those in the diaspora and who are transnational to look at language and identity as manifested through language. This was the focus of my recent manuscript Choosing a Mother Tongue: The Politics of Language and Identity in Ukraine (Multilingual Matters, 2019) and of my recently published collaborative online gallery Belonging in the Diaspora (2021). Furthermore, this area of my research regularly includes an examination of trilingualism, especially working with young adult speakers of Ukrainian, Russian, and English. My studies of language and identity also include language ideologies and borders, discursive identity performance, and the social significance of linguistic variation in phonological features such as palatalisation.
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TranslanguagingTranslanguaging is a paradigm shift in applied linguistics, challenging the ideas of individual languages (named as such), pointing to their colonial history and desire to order and categorise. This idea is being explored in the Wellington Translanguaging Project (with Associate Investigators Dr. Vincent Olsen-Reeder and Dr. Honiara Salanoa), involving educational ethnographies across Aotearoa New Zealand (itself a superdiverse country with over 160 languages). This project involves working with and alongside teachers and communities, utilising appropriate transcultural methodologies (rather than Western dominant methodologies). Our aim in this work is to connect theory with practice and apply it to pedagogy, all while maintaining a focus on socially responsive translanguaging. We also aim to support language reclamation, and the two communities we are currently working with are te reo Māori puna reo and Samoan a'oga amata (early childhood education centers). Through these partnerships, we aim to build greater understandings of pedagogical and spontaneous translanguaging, linguistic development, and sociolinguistic socialisation, while maintaining a focus on supporting language reclamation efforts. This work also inspired the co-edited volume (with Dr. Vincent Olsen-Reeder) Embracing Multilingualism across Educational Contexts (Victoria University Press, 2019). Related investigations also include theoretical inquiry (with Assoc. Prof. Jonathan Newton and Madeline Ash), and the role of multimodal linguistic landscapes in this research context. As the PI of this project and the related investigations, please contact me regarding any questions.
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Linguistic LandscapesThe field of linguistic landscapes is a fairly new subfield of linguistics, though quickly growing, investigating the meaning and purpose of language in place and space. My contributions to this field have included incorporating more qualitative methods to what has primarily been a quantitative area of inquiry, uncovering how linguistic landscapes can be used to analyse movements of power such as mass-scale protests like Occupy and immigration reform marches, and to establish a framework showing through linguistic landscapes how linguistic space can be reappropriated, thus overcoming erasure and achieving visibility. Additionally, I examine how the linguistic landscape can support the normalisation of translanguaging practices and pedagogy. I also currently work on how transgressions in the linguistic landscape (such as graffiti) can be used by activist groups as teachable moments. This work was recently featured in the co-edited volume (with Dr. Greg Niedt) Linguistic Landscapes Beyond the Language Classroom (Bloomsbury, 2020).
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Forensic LinguisticsIn addition to translanguaging, heritage languages, identity, language policy, and linguistic landscapes, I have a strong research interest in forensic linguistics. As such, I work professionally as a Forensic Linguist, analysing open cases and cases under appeal, and giving expert testimony at trial. I investigate cases for the Crown and the defense, as well as for the police, agencies, and individuals. At this intersection of language and law, I am interested especially in threat analysis, as well as language and memory, and challenges of the legal process for minority language speakers. Threat analysis utilises such theoretical concepts as phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics to identify the author/speaker and intentions in documents under investigation. The cognitive and psychological investigation into language and memory informs studies of reliability in witness testimony. By understanding which situations create the most and least reliable testimony, the legal system can present more accurate evidence in the courtroom. Discourse analysis and pragmatics also inform contextual understandings of language use and expectations, both for highly proficient and less proficient speakers involved in legal processes.
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