Current Students

MEET OUR 2025-2026 COHORT

Robert Cross (Major in Russian and Applied Linguistics) – Working with the guidance Vira Zhdanovych as my advisor, I am comparing the decline of indigenous languages in Alaska and Siberia and efforts that have been made to protect them. I will first calculate the rates of decline of each language using census records and other reports. I will then consult policy changes, first-hand accounts, and establishments of residential schools, and other primary sources to determine what factors aided in the preservation of languages in one region more than the other. With this analysis, I will be able to make an informed theory about what strategies are more effective to protect vulnerable languages. This project is very ambitious, but I am passionate about this subject and I hope that my research, even in a small way, helps other minority languages stay alive in the future.

 

Gavin Lee (Major in Applied Linguistics) – Working with Dr. Omar Ka, I am analyzing Nazi and Trumpian media, focusing on the language rhetoric in propaganda to determine the rationality behind the claims that the two leaderships are similar, ideologically, politically, and rhetorically. As many are aware, the Trump administration has committed and enacted various questionable actions and policies, to which people have claimed to be comparable to the Nazis; my primary aim is to evaluate the extent of these claims. In doing so, my analysis includes a review of Nazi and Trumpian literature, textual analysis of propaganda texts, and an ethnography of Instagram. This ethnography provides new data on this topic by examining how social media, specifically Instagram, has been utilized to voice dissent, promote activism, and disseminate information during a period of widespread misinformation.

 

Egypt Seldon (Major in Korean and Asian Studies) – Working under the guidance of Dr. Kyung-Eun Yoon, I am examining how Korean–English hybridized neologisms survive and become institutionally recognized over time. My project focuses on Englishized words in Korean that combine English elements with Korean and Sino-Korean morphemes, exploring why some of these newly coined terms persist in use while others fade. Through this research, I aim to show that Korean–English hybridized neologisms are not accidental or deficient forms, but predictable outcomes of language contact that contribute meaningfully to Global Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca.

 

Sarah Uebersax (Major in Applied Linguistics) – Working with Dr. Omar Ka, I will be conducting a manual acoustic analysis of British modern rock music, focusing on rhoticity in singers’ accent shifts. Data shows that singers across decades alternate their accent between American and British English features. Researchers believe this may be due to a stylistic choice or cultural influence. I will take an articulatory perspective to see if these shifts can be explained by ‘singability’ – singers may prefer sounds with higher sonority to facilitate vocal production. My analysis will include a comparison of British and American singing accents to determine if there is evidence of postvocalic /r/-dropping in both American and British sung language. This topic connects sociophonetics to music and contributes to broader discussions of language contact in sociolinguistics.