Courses

Sociolinguistics

Phonetics

Pidgins and Creoles

Curriculum Vitae


"Orange Grove" by Jamaican artist Kapo

Alicia Beckford Wassink

Department of Linguistics, University of Washington

Office: A210H Padelford Hall

Phone: +(206) 616-9589

 

I am an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington, and am director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory.  I will be teaching two courses this quarter, Spring 2009, ÒAdvanvced SociolinguisticsÓ (LING535), and the seminar ÒProblems in Linguistics:  Change across the LifespanÓ (LING580C). On this website, you will find up-to-date course information for my classes, and information about my research.

 

The linked items below will take you to past syllabi and course descriptions for the courses that I teach. Please note that there has recently been a restructuring of the sociolinguistics course series.  You can find out the new numbers for all of the socio series here.

Introduction to Linguistic Thought (LING200)

Areal Linguistics: Pidgins and Creoles (LING430)

Sociolinguistic Applications of Social Network Theory (LING534)

Sociolinguistics I (LING432/ANTH432)

Introduction to Linguistic Phonetics (LING450)

Advanced Linguistic Phonetics (LING554)

Sociolinguistics II (LING433/ANTH433)

Advanced Sociolinguistics (LING535)

Problems in Linguistics (LING580C)

I received my PhD in 1999 from the University of Michigan Department of Linguistics. If you aren't sure what linguistics is, you might find it helpful to link to the homepage of the Linguistic Society of America. My research interests lie in phonetics (the study of the acoustic properties, perception, and physiological aspects of human speech) and sociolinguistics (the study of language in its various social contexts). The language I study is Jamaican Creole. When I'm in Jamaica conducting fieldwork, my home base is the University of the West Indies.

PowerPoint presentation for work recently completed under the project, "Intraspeaker variability in vowel production, part II: An investigation of motherese, hyperspeech, and Lombard speech in Jamaican speakers", funded by the Center for Mind, Brain and Learning (now ILabs)

 

UW Sociolinguistics Laboratory links:

Website for The Sociolinguistics Brown Bag, an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the University of Washington and other local colleges and universities dedicated to the discussion of sociolinguistic theory, issues of language variation, and language as a matter of public concern. 

Click here to access Sociolinguistics Laboratory resources (some links are viewable by restricted access only):

á       Spring 2004 Corpus Holdings in Sociolinguistics Brown Bag workshop

á       List of Sociolinguistics laboratory corpus holdings (maintained by the UW Computational Linguistics Laboratory)

á       Elicitation materials clearinghouse.

á       Sociolinguistics laboratory library database (.fp7) (ddr)

 

Other Sociolinguistics links:

á       Linguistic Data Consortium, located at the University of Pennsylvania

á       Prof. WassinkÕs English in the Pacific Northwest Project

 

Some phonetics links:

á       Website for the University of Washington Department of Linguistics Phonetics Laboratory

á       A text-to-speech synthesizer, created by Lucent Technologies.

á       Table of contents, abstracts, and other information about articles recently published in the Journal of Phonetics, for which I am a former editorial assistant.

á       Homepage of the Acoustical Society of America.

á       Homepage of Haskins Laboratories (New Haven, CT).


Need to look up a word? Try Webster's online dictionary


wassink@u.washington.edu

last updated 4/2/09