On May 4-5, the department hosted the 40th Northwest Linguistics Conference (NWLC). This is an annual graduate student-run conference in linguistics centered on themes of language in the Northwestern region of North America. This conference is hosted in alternating years by Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and the University of Washington.
Our graduate students put a lot of work into organizing the event, and it was a big success! We had… Read more
We have a lot of good news to celebrate this quarter, and many people to congratulate!
Professors Shane Steinert-Threlkeld and Naja Ferjan Ramírez have both been promoted to Associate Professors with tenure. Lance Forshay was promoted to full Teaching Professor.
Joyce Parvi was nominated for the Distinguished Staff Award, UW's highest staff honor.
Graduate Students Emily Ahn and Kaveri Sheth both successfully completed their General Exams, and are officially PhD candidates.
The Department of Linguistics regretfully announces that Virginia Beavert, native speaker of Sahaptin (Ichishkíin, the traditional language of the Yakama Nation) and long time collaborator of faculty member Sharon Hargus, died on February 8, 2024, at the age of 102.
Sharon writes:
I first met Virginia in 1987. She had come to the department looking for a linguist to work with. That in itself is extraordinary, and probably due to her observation of her stepfather Alex Saluskin collaborating… Read more
The Spring 2024 Language Bias Workshop will take place on May 15, 2024 from 3:00pm-4pm in Denny Hall 159.
This workshop will explore how to recognize and mitigate language bias on campus, whether in the classroom or in other contexts. It will address questions like "What is language bias?" and how does language bias affect our goal of creating a more welcoming, equitable and enriching environment for all individuals on campus?
This workshop is hosted by the UW Working Group on Linguistic Bias… Read more
The Linguistics Department will be offering two courses this summer - LING 200, Introduction to Linguistics, and LING 234, Language and Diversity. Each course will be taught by Lorna Rozelle, and there are no pre-requisites.
Introduction to Linguistics (LING 200)
This course studies one of the most fundamental characteristics of humans, language. We will analyze language at all levels of linguistic structure, from phonetics to semantics, as well as look at topics in language acquisition,… Read more
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
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