Betsy Sneller

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Betsy Sneller’s primary research interest is in language variation and change.

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Michigan State University

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Biography

Betsy Sneller’s primary research interest is in language variation and change. Her dissertation work focused on the way that dramatic structural sound change (i.e., phonological change) is represented and produced by individual speakers during the change. As a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University, 2018-2020, she used experimental methods to investigate the way that children acquire sociolinguistic and phonological variation. Dr. Sneller is co-director of the MSU Sociolinguistics Lab and the PI of the MI Diaries Project.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Language Change‎
Language Variation
Phonological Change
Sociolinguistics

Accomplishments

MSU University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum, Best Poster Award

2021

MSU CAL Undergraduate Research Initiative Award

2020

University of Pennsylvania IDEAL Council Awardf or University Structural Improvements in Diversity and Inclusion

2018

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D.

Linguistics

2018

University of Essex

M.A.

Sociolinguistics

2012

Calvin College

B.A.

English Literature, Linguistics

2010

News

Help! My Kids Are Developing Philadelphia Accents

Philadelphia Magazine  online

2022-02-02

I ASK BETSY SNELLER, an assistant professor of linguistics at Michigan State University who has studied the Philadelphia accent as well as how children pick up on it and other regional accents, if this transmission vector makes sense. She confirms that school is where most accent work happens for young kids, though most of the research has been done on in-person school.

“What we often find is that kids sound like their parents until they go to school,” Sneller tells me. “Then all the kids come into kindergarten sounding different, and by the end of the year, they more or less sound the same.” Usually, kids pick up sounds from other students, with teachers playing less of a role. But last year wasn’t usual. “Zoom school throws a wrench in things,” Sneller says.

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Journal Articles

Sociolinguistic prompts in the 21st century: Uniting past approaches and current directions

Language and Linguistics Compass

2023

As technology (particularly smartphone and computer technology) has advanced, sociolinguistic methodology has likewise adapted to include remote data collection. Remote methods range from approximating the traditional sociolinguistic interview via synchronous video conferencing to developing new methods for asynchronous self‐recording (Boyd et al., 2015; Leeman et al., 2020). In this paper, we take a close look at the question prompts sent to participants in an asynchronous, remote self‐recording project (“MI Diaries”). We discuss how some of the techniques initially developed for obtaining a range of styles in a traditional in‐person sociolinguistic interview can be fruitfully adapted to a remote context.

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The effects of topic and part of speech on nonbinary speakers’ use of (ING)

University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics

2023

This paper investigates the variable usage of (ING) by nonbinary speakers across conversation topics, specifically asking whether nonbinary speakers shift their rates of (ING) variation when discussing the salient topic of gender. 8 nonbinary speakers (4 AFAB and 4 AMAB, ranging from 21 to 27 years old) participated in sociolinguistic interviews conducted by a nonbinary researcher who was familiar with each interview participant. A modular interview guide was developed based on Labov’s Q-GEN-II modules with modifications made to specifically obtain participant narratives on their experiences with gender identity and expression in addition to traditional narratives. The results of the study find that despite a markedly more deliberative style during gender topics, participants do not shift rates of (ING) across topics.

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Sample size matters in calculating Pillai scores

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

2023

Since their introduction to sociolinguistics by Hay, Warren, and Drager [(2006). J. Phon. (Modell. Sociophon. Var.) 34(4), 458–484], Pillai scores have become a standard metric for quantifying vowel overlap. However, there is no established threshold value for determining whether two vowels are merged, leading to conflicting ad hoc measures. Furthermore, as a parametric measure, Pillai scores are sensitive to sample size. In this paper, we use generated data from a simulated pair of underlyingly merged vowels to demonstrate (1) larger sample sizes yield reliably more accurate Pillai scores, (2) unequal group sizes across the two vowel classes are irrelevant in the calculation of Pillai scores, and (3) it takes many more data than many sociolinguistic studies typically analyze to return a reliably low Pillai score for underlyingly merged data.

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