Recent News

Linguistics Professor Betsy Evans is a guest on the February 2024 episode of ‘In a Manner of Speaking’. Professor Evans and Paul Meier discuss the history and mission of the American Dialect Society and explore the latest trends in accents, dialects, and vocabulary of the Unites States. Professor Evans is a co-founder of the Linguistics Bias Working group at the University of Washington and the executive director of the American Dialect Society. Listen to the full episode… Read more
In an article about women and BIPOC academic entrepreneurs, Linguistics Professor Alicia Wassink shares her experiences, both personal and professional, and their influence on her work. Professor Wassink received a CoMotion Innovation Gap Fund award for her project on mitigating racial bias in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) by leveraging sociolinguistic knowledge and tools to identify blind spots and pain points that… Read more
As part of the UW College of Arts and Sciences' Second Annual "Big Read",  join Linguistics Professor Dr. Emily M. Bender for a conversation with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, author of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines (Penguin Random House, 2023) and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. The event will take place on Tuesday, February 20th 2024, at 1:00pm, in the Husky Union Building (HUB) South Ballroom. Registration is required to… Read more
Dr. Kirby Conrod started their linguistics journey via a double major in Linguistics and Literature for their BA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where they discovered a deep love of syntax. After spending time teaching English in Taiwan, they then moved to Seattle, Washington to pursue their PhD in Linguistics at the University of Washington, where they specialized in syntax and sociolinguistics, advised by Professors Citko and Wassink. Their 2019 dissertation, Pronouns Raising and… Read more
A number of department members (both graduate students and faculty) attended and the 2024 LSA conference in New York! Everyone had a great time presenting their research, meeting linguists, and learning about research from other institutions, as well as doing some exploring in NYC! Here are some talks and sessions from the conference which involved department members: LSA Organized Session. "The historical role of professional organizations in the emergence of the scientific community of… Read more
Congratulations to Angelina McMillan-Major, Naomi Shapiro , and Ted Kye, who have all successfully defended their PhDs! On July 18th , Angelina successfully defended her dissertation titled “Language Dataset Documentation Design: Learning from Deaf and Indigenous Communities”. On October 31st, Naomi successfully defended her dissertation titled “On the Diverse Language Experiences of Humans and Machines”. On… Read more
Yuan Chai joined the Department of Linguistics as a teaching associate this year with a 2022 PhD from the University of California San Diego. As a phonetician and fieldworker, Chai's research is centered on the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of various phonation types, including creaky, breathy, and falsetto voices. Her fieldwork includes documenting the Yateé Zapotec language, indigenous to Oaxaca, Mexico, and also spoken by diaspora communities in Los Angeles. She focuses on… Read more
We are pleased to introduce 6 new PhD students who joined the department in Fall 2023. They each have unique backgrounds and research interests, and we are excited to see what they accomplish over the next few years! Xiaolin Niu: Before joining UW, Xiaolin completed her undergraduate and master's in Chinese Language and Literature at two universities in China. Her research interests involve semantics, semantic-syntax interface, and Chinese linguistics. Beyond research, she… Read more
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In an article about footballer DK Metcalf's use of ASL on the field, Dan Mathis and Kristi Winter provide their expertise and input. Read the full article here!
Linguistics Professor Emily Bender will be talking with author Ted Chiang at an event hosted by Clarion West. They will discuss the current AI hype and realistic expectations, as well as whose voices are still missing in the field. The event will be held on November 10th at 7:30pm. It will be in a hybrid format, with in-person attendance at Town Hall Seattle and virtual attendance over Zoom. Click Read more