Hello! Thanks for stopping by! My CV can be found here. Papers can be found under the “Papers” tab! For media requests, please send me an email!
I am a sociophonetician, specifically interested in how people use linguistic variation to perform and construct their social identities and to understand the identities of others through differences in their use of properties related to intonation and voice quality.
In April 2016, I defended my dissertation entitled “Intonational Variation, Linguistic Style, and the Black/Biracial Experience” at New York University. My dissertation chair was Renee Blake, and my committee consisted of Lisa Davidson, Greg Guy, John Singler, and Erik Thomas (NCSU). In 2016-2017, I was a Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College. Since 2017, I have been an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College. From 2020-2022, I was on leave from Pomona as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania but returned to Pomona in Fall 2022.
My ongoing research aims to address how speakers and listeners make social judgments based on acoustic properties, using quantitative methods, with a special focus on prosodic variables. I’m currently (2020-2023) the PI on a grant entitled ““Don’t Take That Tone With Me”: Linguistic Variation and Disciplinary Action on African American Children in Schools” along with Dr. Sabriya Fisher (Wellesley College). The project is funded by the Lyle Spencer Research Awards. In Fall 2020, I taught a Freshman seminar on Language and Social Identity, as well as a graduate research seminar on Prosody and Social Identity. I was on research leave during 2021. During Spring 2022, I taught Introduction to Sociolinguistics and Research Seminar on Sociolinguistics and Human-Computer Interaction. In Fall 2022, I taught Phonetics and Introduction to Linguistics. In Spring 2023, I am currently teaching Language and Society as well as Linguistic Discrimination, which is conducted in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Format.
News and Recent Appearances
-In July 2023, Sabriya Fisher (Wellesley College) and I will present our ongoing work on the relationship between the use of AAE features and experiences of school discipline in a workshop alongside the 2023 LSA Summer Institute in Amherst, MA.
-In May 2023, I will be the keynote speaker at the University of California at Davis’ Cluster on Language Research Symposium.
-In April 2023, I will present a colloquium in the Department of Linguistics at UCSD
-In March 2023, I will present a colloquium in the University of Arizona Cognitive Science Speaker Series.
-In February 2023, I presented a colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley.
-In January 2023, I presented a talk in the Friday Speaker Series at Georgetown University.
-In January 2023, I received the Early Career Award at the Linguistics Society of America Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. I was also a judge for the Five-Minute Linguist Competition!
-In December 2022, I presented a colloquium in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT,
-In October 2022, I presented a colloquium talk at Reed College.
-In October 2022, I was an invited speaker at UBC’s LinguisticsNow series in Vancouver, BC.
-In October 2022, I presented a paper, “Prosodic Variation in the Speech of Black/biracial Women: Pitch Accents and Peak Delay Differences as a Function of Interlocutor” at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV 50) at Stanford University.
-In October 2022, l presented a paper entitled “Language specific effects on ASR errors for world Englishes” with Penn student co-authors June Choe, Yiran Chen, May Pikyu Chan, Aini Li and Xin Gao at CoLing 2022 in Gyeongju, South Korea.
-In September 2022, l presented a paper entitled “Training and typological bias in ASR performance for world Englishes” with Penn student co-authors May Pikyu Chan, June Choe, Aini Li, Yiran Chen, and Xin Gao at Interspeech 2022 in Inchon, South Korea. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV 49).
-In July 2022, l presented a paper entitled “Watch your tone: Race, gender, and voice quality in automated “Tone of Voice” evaluation” with co-author Paul Reed (University of Alabama) at Sociolinguistic Symposium 24 in Ghent, Belgium.
-In May 2022, I was an invited speaker at Gradience in Intonation Workshop (GRIN) at Speech Prosody 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal
-In April 2022, I gave a colloquium lecture in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California Santa Cruz.
-On April 27, 2022, my ongoing work on racilized perceptions of Apple’s Siri voices was featured in the article “When People Think Siri Sounds Black, Biases Often Surface“, in Consumer Reports.
-In March 2022, I gave a lecture in the Language, Culture and Communication Colloquium at the University of Alberta.
-In March 2022, I presented a colloquium lecture in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University.
-In April 2022, I presented a colloquium lecture in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Languages
-Mainstream U.S. English (Native)
-African American English (Native)
-Peruvian Spanish (Near-native)
-Italian (Beginner)
-Bolivian Quechua (Beginnner)
-Cairene Arabic (Beginner)
Education
-Ph.D., Linguistics, New York University (2016). Dissertation Title: Intonational Variation, Linguistic Style, and the Black/Biracial Experience. Supervisor: Renee Blake
-M.A., Linguistics, New York University, New York, NY (2014)
-B.A., Magna Cum Laude with Honors and Research Distinction in Linguistics; Linguistics, Spanish. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (2010)
Honors
-Lyle Spencer Research Award. “‘Don’t Take That Tone With Me’: Linguistic Variation and Disciplinary Action on African American Children in Schools”. PI. With Dr. Sabriya Fisher, Co-PI. Award Amount: $878,869 (2020-2023)
-Linguistic Society of America Early Career Award (2023)
-Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship-Pomona College (2016-2017)
-New York University Global Research Initiative Fellowship at NYU Washington, D.C. (2015)
-NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (2015-2016)
-National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2013-2016)
-Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute Fellowship (2013)
Links to Linguists I Like
–Vocal Fries Pod
–Lingthusiasm Pod
–Because Language Pod
Nicole Holliday, Ph.D 