Dr. Jennifer Sclafani has received a College of Liberal Arts Pedagogical Innovation Award for the new course she is offering this spring, APLING 697: Sociolinguistic Research Methods. The course provides students with practical experience in data collection and analytic techniques used to explore connections between language, diversity, and place, as they collaborate in conducting original sociolinguistic research in the communities of Greater Boston.

The grant will be used to fund students’ research activities as they conduct ethnographic fieldwork, document linguistic landscapes, and conduct interviews with Boston residents. Questions they are exploring include: How does the multilingual linguistic landscape of Boston today reflect the social and immigration history of the city? What are the myths and realities of the “Boston accent”? How has the Boston dialect changed over time? What are Bostonians’ understandings of and attitudes about the languages spoken in their communities and schools?

The class will create educational materials to share their findings with the public at the end of the semester, including a poster for Healey Library and a video for the Applied Linguistics Department website.