Somos Family Mural Project

Envisioning an LGBTQ & Mexican/Chicano/Latino mural
in Phoenix meeting (24 January 2013)

As I finish up my fieldwork, I am very excited to be embarking on a new phase of the project, working with a creative group of folks in Phoenix, Arizona to create a mural about what it means to be queer and Mexican/Chicano/Latino in this place at this time. My hope is that this project will bring community members together in dialogue and with a common purpose -- creating a public art project that says 'aquí estamos y no nos vamos' and 'somos family/we are familia'. The following link will take you to a request for proposals and a more detailed description of the project: Somos Familia RFP

Blogging at the intersection of language & LGBTQ

HuffPost Gay Voices - 8 January 2013

It has been such a privilege to appear as a guest on HuffPost Live on a few occasions with host Alicia Menendez, bringing my sociolinguistics perspective to issues as varied as speakers of languages other than English in disaster preparedness and relief in the U.S. to whether or not children should be taught euphemisms for certain body parts. After a recent segment on the term 'homophobia', I was honored to be invited to write a piece for The Huffington Post's Gay Voices blog. You can find my posts archived here. Please visit, read and comment if you are interested; like and share, if you are so inclined.

I had such a nice trip to Amherst, MA for a talk at the Spanish & Portuguese program (Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures), thanks to an invitation from my colleague and fellow LASSO member Patricia Gubitosi. Patricia showed me around campus a bit, and we talked about our research and teaching over coffee before I gave my talk.

I think my talk went pretty well. I was excited to share some progress I have made on my analysis of gender and authority in U.S. Spanish language soccer broadcast discourse thanks to comments on an earlier version from Chase Raymond (UCLA) at LASSO in South Padre Island, TX in 2011. Now I need to find the time to write up the research and get feedback.

After the talk, I met Patricia's husband, a lifelong fútbol fan, who had lots of great ideas to share with me. I was also glad to meet some of Patricia's students and hear about their projects they are working on for their discourse analysis class.

Closing out 2012

I can't believe that it has been so long since I updated this site. 2012 turned out to be a busy year indeed!

Since my last post, I presented at AAAL in Boston, Sociolinguistics Symposium in Berlin, LIAR III in Urbana, IL and LASSO in Fort Wayne, IN. I also carried out two months of fieldwork/data collection in Phoenix, AZ for my current research project on language and identity practices among gay & lesbian Latinas/os in Phoenix. I am also pleased to share that I was awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in June, 2012 and elected to the Advisory Board of the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA). What a year!

The last few months of 2012 look to be just as interesting. I have been invited to present at the Dept. of Communication Colloquium at UNH on 1 November, and I will be giving a guest lecture at UMASS at the invitation of my colleague Patricia Gubitosi, Dept. Languages, Literatures & Cultures (Program in Spanish & Portuguese). I will also be finishing two articles -- one on gender & women's football/soccer discourse and another on public service announcements, and working at my new role as media officer for IGALA -- including establishing a facebook presence and managing the organization's listserve.

I am excited to look ahead to what is coming up in spring 2013. In January 2013 I will complete my fieldwork with a month of additional work in Phoenix. Then, thanks to a fellowship from UNH's Center for the Humanities, I will have a release from teaching obligations for the spring semester, which will allow me to make significant progress on a manuscript. In order to take full advantage of this time, I will be taking a break from conference presentations. I am sad to miss out on the Spanish in the U.S./Spanish in Contact conference in McAllen, TX in March.

February 2012

One month into 2012 and I am busier than I could have imagined. I am hard at work on my paper for the AAAL Conference on "Negotiating gender in Mexican women’s soccer (football) television coverage" thanks to Jared Martin and Darling Membreno, two fabulous UNH M.A. students who spent their January breaks transcribing data. Great job! I am also teaching two courses (Adv. Spanish Conversation & Composition and Intro. to Spanish Linguistics), as well as supervising two independent studies (they both revolve around bilingualism, identity, and media/pop culture), one practicum for a student who is volunteering at a correctional facility, using her Spanish skills to improve the experience for Spanish-speaking visitors, and several M.A. projects. Finally, I am preparing for my fieldwork this summer in Phoenix. While I am not looking forward to the heat, I am so excited to find two community member research assistants and start talking with people about language, identity and community. My Multilingua article "Homophobic slurs and public apologies: The discursive struggle over fag/maricón in public discourse" due out in March 2012 has been published on-line, so if you have access you can find it here.

Upcoming conferences!

2012 is shaping up to be an exciting year. I am very excited to be presenting for the first time at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Boston in March 2012. For all of those coming to Boston from afar, let me know if you need recommendations for restaurants or sightseeing activities. At UNH, I'm only about an hour's train from Boston, so it is great to have an international conference in my 'backyard'. I have also submitted abstracts to the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA) conference in São Leopoldo (Brazil) in June 2012 and to the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19 (SS19) in Berlin (Germany) in August 2012. Finally, I am very much looking forward to being one of the plenary speakers at the 3rd International Conference on Linguistic Impoliteness and Rudeness (LIAR 3) in Urbana, IL in August 2012 and to giving the presidential address at LASSO 41 (Linguistic Association of the Southwest) in Fort Wayne, IN in October 2012.

Submissions are still open for SS19 and LIAR 3 until January 31, 2012, and the call for papers for LASSO 41 should be out soon, with a deadline sometime in June 2012. Send in an abstract; I hope to see you in 2012!

New Grant from the National Science Foundation

I am so happy to report that I have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a two-year project on language and identity among gay and lesbian Latinos in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The grant, titled "Language, Identity, and Community in a Multi-Language Context", will fund fieldwork during the summer of 2012 as well as support for graduate students and community member researchers. The results of the research will be disseminated both in academic contexts (conferences and publications) as well as public contexts through collaboration with local community organizations.