Applied Linguistics Department

Dr. Jennifer Sclafani presented her research at the Linguistic Society of America’s Annual Meeting in New York City in January. Her poster presentation, “The Sociolinguistic Enregisterment of Local Belonging in Boston’s Mayoral Campaigns”, provides an overview of her examination of how the two final candidates in the 2021 Boston mayoral election—Annissa Essaibi George and Michelle Wu—used language to construct mayoral identities as women of color, children of immigrants, and working mothers. She also examined how the candidates used these identities to voice their position on various policy issues affecting working families in Boston, align themselves with voters, and index local belonging in the city of Boston. Her work provides important insights into how women are changing the voice of public executive leadership in contemporary American politics.

On September 6, 2023, Dr. Christian Chun delivered a presentation at the 14th Linguistic Landscape Workshop (LL14) in Madrid. The conference, which featured a hybrid format, showcased his exploration of critiques of capitalism within the subversive linguistic landscapes of graffiti and street art across urban areas in Los Angeles, London, and Boston. His presentation was titled Imaginaries of Alternative Worlds in Urban Landscapes.

Here is the abstract of the presentation:

This talk presents examples of critiques of capitalism in the subversive linguistic landscapes of graffiti and street art in Los Angeles, London, and Boston in urban spaces that have been dominated by capital. Drawing upon research in urban studies, urban geography, ethnographic discourse analysis, and linguistic landscapes and the theoretical work of Lefebvre’s (1991) conceptual triad of representations of space, representational spaces and spatial practices, and Soja’s (1989, 2010) notion of the “socio-spatial dialectic, I explore the visual topographies of capitalism: the architecture, residential and store signs, public murals, statues and graffiti that depict and/or represent some aspect of the economy, whether it features corporate culture, consumer lifestyle and culture, and critiques or celebrations of capitalism. By drawing on the photographs I have taken in these cities, I address the following questions: How do these sociopolitical texts create, shape, and define counter-hegemonic and anti-capitalist imaginaries and practices in public, institutional, and commercialized spaces? To what extent are anti-capitalist graffiti allowed in certain places by the powers that be as a non-threatening space for dissenting voices and thus as a safety valve for opposition to the ruling class? But in calling for another world, how would these graffiti prefigure and encourage people into fighting for another world? In asking these questions, I explore how such spaces including linguistic landscapes that have been at times transient can now enter into academic (such as here) and archival spaces including social media prompting further reflection, discussion and possible action.

keywords: linguistic landscapes, capitalism, urban studies

Recently, Boston Mayor Michele Wu announced a groundbreaking partnership between Boston Public Schools and UMass Boston, aimed at transforming the McCormack School on Columbia Point into the city’s first university-assisted community school. This initiative marks a first for Boston, establishing a novel model of education within the community. Additionally, Rachel LaRusso, a doctoral candidate in the Applied Linguistics department, is contributing to this effort by teaching as part of UMB’s Early College program.

The Beacon Times highlights this news and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco‘s pivotal role in this development. Check here.

This is an exciting news, and congratulations, Rachel!

With the rise of individual/organization media creation and broadcasting, the esteemed academic journal, the Journal of Sociolinguistics, appears to have ventured into the podcast realm with their own series titled JSLX Conversations. In the fourth episode, titled “Luisa Martín Rojo meets Christian Chun: A conversation about ‘A World without Capitalism?‘, Professor Dr. Christian Chun takes center stage.

During the interview, Professor Luisa Martín Rojo, hailing from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, engages in a dialogue with Dr. Christian Chun, delving into the discussions surrounding his recent publication, “A World Without Capitalism: Alternative Discourses, Spaces, and Imaginaries,” published by Routledge.

You can access the podcast on the journal’s webpage.

And it is also available on Spotify.

Professor George Mikros from Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, gave a talk on How Large Language Models(LLMs) write? A stylometric comparison of major AI text generative models November 30th at the Applied Linguistics Department, UMass Boston. Professor Mikros provided information about Chat GPT, human perception of AI writing, linguistic and statistical characteristics of LLMs languages, and AI writing detection experiments. During the talk, we learned that Chat GPT is more positive and neutral rather than humans. Surprisingly, humans are more negative in their writing and have more extreme emotions, while AI writing tends to use big words, conjunctions, additive connectives, and smaller paragraphs. What is more shocking based on Professor Mikros’ work that AI is an American, woman, 18-40 years old, agreeable, and politically lefty. After the talk, Prof. Mikros received numerous burning questions from the audience such as what would happen to our education and literacy with AI, how our world will change, and what to expect from AI that led to such fruitful discussion.

Dr. Christian Chun, the professor of the Department of Applied Linguistics, gave a presentation at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. During the yearly Historical Materialism conference, themed The Cost of Life: Oppression, Exploitation, and Struggle in the Time of Monsters, he presented a speech entitled Racism and Capitalism in the U.S.: Longtime Partners in Crime.

Here is the abstract of the presentation.

The historical invention and ensuing enactments of racial discourses, identities, and practices have been essential in their purposeful enabling of capitalism in the US for over three centuries, with the divisions of enslavements and indentured servitude that continued with the post-Civil War sharecropping, much higher rates of unemployment among Blacks than Whites, and the former’s lower wages for the same work. This talk, drawing on a linguistic ethnography, addresses what has been called the psychological wages of Whiteness (e.g., Du Bois, 1992; Roediger, 2007) and how this has prevented time and time again throughout the past 170 years or so the unified solidarity and actions of what has always been a diverse working class in the U.S. The talk features several in-depth interviews with people on how they perceive the role of race in their lives and society that illuminate the theoretical and critical debates on the role of race in aiding and abetting capitalism in the U.S., and how counter-hegemonic discourse approaches can be co-constructed to begin dismantling wages of Whiteness.

Tina Randall a doctoral student in the Applied Linguistics department at UMass Boston was invited as a guest speaker to the 22nd Masters of Arts in Teaching Spanish Webinar Series in Applied Linguistics at Rutgers University. She gave a talk titled Computerized Dynamic Assessment: Practical Applications for the Classroom. Tina’s presentation discussed dynamic assessment as a pedagogical approach. Participants of this webinar learned about DA and its applications for language education and explored how to develop and implement these approaches in their own classrooms.

In the dynamic realm of academia, the recent webinar on the guidelines for editing, reviewing articles, and publishing books served as an illuminating source of knowledge. As editors and reviewers privileged to work with MATSOL, along with being the owners of a publishing company, three doctoral students in Applied Linguistics—Aram Ahmed, Tina Randall, and Rachel Wang—delved into the intricacies of their editorial journey. They candidly shared the motivations and methodologies behind their academic journal reviews, presenting their insights under the theme “Do’s and Don’ts in Editing Articles and Publishing Textbooks.”

The interactive nature of the webinar, combining Q & A sessions with individual presentations, allowed for a comprehensive exploration. The trio of the APLING members unraveled essential principles and shared practical tips for effective editing, discussed the nuanced art of meticulous article reviews, and navigated the complexities of the publishing landscape. Beyond the traditional scope of editorial responsibilities, the discussions ventured into the challenges posed by the digital age, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) assumes a pivotal role. The webinar extensively probed the intersection of AI and plagiarism, casting a spotlight on the ever-evolving ethical considerations in writing within a technology-dominated era.

As an extension of her research with non-binary language learners in U.S. high schools, PhD Candidate Julia Donnelly Spiegelman gave a two-day workshop for French teachers this July in Quebec City, Canada. The institute, called the Institut de Français, UBC à Québec, is a French-immersion program for Canadian teachers of French as a Second Language (FLS) that integrates intensive language practice with educational professional development workshops. Julia’s invited workshop, entitled “Au-delà du binaire du genre en FLS [Beyond the Gender Binary in French as a Second Language],” helped participants to deepen their understanding of gender as a concept and their ability to articulate it in French, engage with the experiences and perspectives of trans and non-binary learners of French, and collectively build a body of gender-expansive resources for teachers of French. These include French-language resources about LGBTQ+ concepts and vocabulary, linguistic strategies, multimodal texts using gender-neutral language, inclusive classroom practices and materials, and academic research; they can be accessed here.

Julia also gave an invited webinar this summer for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), drawing from her survey research to develop 10 Best-Practice recommendations for affirming trans and non-binary identities in world language classrooms. These recommendations can be accessed here and a recording of the webinar is available to ACTFL members on the member platform.

More resources for gender-expansive world language teaching are available on Julia’s website.

Professor Jennifer Sclafani and Ph.D. candidate Nasiba Norova presented at the 11th annual meeting of the Language and Social Interaction Working Group (LANSI) at Teacher’s College, Columbia University.

The two-day conference featured speakers from around the world who are applying a variety of discourse analytic approaches to the study of language use in institutions ranging from medicine and education and politics and legal settings. Their paper, “‘Signature habits’ and ‘strict rules’: Positioning candidates as mothers of color in a mayoral election,” examines the discourse of the 2021 Boston mayoral election and identifies how candidates navigate sexist, xenophobic, and other problematic questions posed during televised debates. Their joint research contributes to our understanding of the central role of language in transformation of political leadership in present-day Boston. 

The conference team shared a post on X/Twitter, capturing the moment of their presentation. To view the post, please click the link.