TANYA L. FLORES portrait
  • Fulbright Scholars supervisor, World Languages and Cultures
  • Associate Chair, World Languages and Cultures
  • Bridge Program dept rep, World Languages and Cultures
  • Associate Professor, World Languages and Cultures
801-581-7561

Research Summary

My research focuses on acoustic & accommodation analyses of socio-phonetic variation based on gender, class and age differences. I study speaker-audience interactions as a motivation for variation. My research investigates the interfaces of language and identity as construed by gender, class, and ethnicity. My dissertation was on Chilean Spanish using digital media. Currently I am working on projects with Japanese-Spanish bilinguals and Hispanic hard-of-hearing children. I like variety!

Education

  • PhD, Hispanic Linguistics, Indiana University. Project: Dissertation: A socio-phonetic examination of co-articulation in Chilean public speech.

Biography

I am a socio-phonetician and Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the

department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah. My research

focuses on sound changes that are motivated by social factors. My work brings

together detailed acoustic analysis, variationist sociolinguistics, and speech

accommodation methods, all supported by statistical analyses. The combination of

methods that I employ allow me to propose reasons for socio-phonetic variation

that consider several motivating factors, including phonetic environment, speaker &

listener traits, type and origin of discourse, and lexical frequency of spoken words.

See my research page (https://faculty.utah.edu/u0985432-

TANYA_L._FLORES/bibliography/index.hml) for a complete list of publications from

previous studies.

Currently, my research focuses on: (1) Japanese-Spanish bilinguals and (2) Hispanic

hard-of-hearing children.

Please visit this page to download a free copy of the Spanish language handbook

for parents of children with hearing loss (Manual para familias de niños

con pérdida de audición)

https://languages.utah.edu/_resources/documents/_faculty-resources/parenthandbook.

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