In this three-paper dissertation project, I explore how 'English' becomes a recognizable object within the context of adult ESOL education. Building on scholarship on named languages (Garcia, 2019; Makoni & Pennycook, 2006), the historical construction of languages (Bonfiglio, 2010; Irvine & Gal, 2000), and raciolinguistic ideologies…

This dissertation presents a variationist sociolinguistic study of the variable placement of subject personal pronouns before or after verbs in Spanish in New York City (e.g. "ella canta"; "canta ella", both "she sings"). It pursues a line of inquiry that partially replicates recent work by Otheguy & Zentella…

This morphosyntactic dissertation study compares the use of MOOD (indicative & subjunctive) in first- and second-generation Spanish speakers in New York City. The data for this study are from a transcription of naturalistic Spanish conversations with New Yorkers of different generations, representing the six primary Spanish-speaking groups in…

In this paper I closely examine spontaneous interactions between members of a tri-generation Italian American family. I argue that members show different language preferences and differing attitudes towards the family's multilingual identity but that they all demonstrate a degree of "engagement" with the heritage language. Phenomena that…

This study examines a major linguistic event underway in New York City. Of its 10 million inhabitants, nearly a third are speakers of Spanish. This community is socially and linguistically diverse: Some speakers are recent arrivals from Latin America while others are lifelong New Yorkers. Some have origins in the Caribbean, the historic source of…

This longitudinal study focuses on the language production of two siblings, aged 6 and 9 at the beginning of the data collection period, who have been brought up in a bilingual family in New York. The parents of the two girls are native speakers of German and Spanish, respectively, and English for them is the language of education and the larger…

For many American youths, school is not only an academic endeavor, but a social one. This study identifies the ways in which speakers use lexical choices in the creation of their linguistic identity and style. This dissertation centers on a group of students at Henry Fleming Middle School, located on the eastern end of Long Island. The students,…

Strategies for deciding which language to use when forms part of the sociolinguistic competence of speakers who can speak more than one language. Language choices are shaped by a number of factors, including linguistic proficiency of both speaker and interlocutor, the ingroup or outgroup status of each, and the setting in which an exchange takes…