35.1089, Featured Linguist: Monica Nesbitt

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1089. Fri Mar 29 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1089, Featured Linguist: Monica Nesbitt

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Date: 29-Mar-2024
From: Justin Fuller [justin at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Featured Linguist: Monica Nesbitt


Every year as part of our fund drive, the LINGUIST List features a
number of linguists whose research is of particular interest to our
readers, whose lives as linguists or path to linguistics has been
remarkable, and/or who have impacted and contributed to the worldwide
linguistics community.

I'm pleased to announce that this week's Featured Linguist is Dr.
Monica Nesbitt, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Indiana
University Bloomington.

Monica writes:

Like many, I didn’t find linguistics until late in my undergraduate
career. I have, however, always been a sociophonologist!

My earliest memories include navigating new linguistic landscapes and
watching my parents negotiate and mold their language use. My family
is from Massachusetts, which is where I lived until the age of five
when we moved to California. This move was not only a geospatial one,
it was also an economic and racial change for my family. My mother,
who grew up in the projects, had landed a corporate job in California.
In this transition, we moved from a predominantly Black, blue-collar
area in Massachusetts to a squarely middle-class area in California.
And my mother was the only (non-janitorial or administrative staff)
Black woman in her fifteen-story workplace building which was made up
predominantly of white men.

My five-year old self was fascinated not only with the many new
languages and dialects in my new home, but I was enthralled with the
seemingly effortless ways in which my mother was able to style-shift
at the drop of a hat. She was always well in command of her more
standardized speech, especially in the workplace and at company
gatherings. The most delightful thing to witness was when that
beautiful Black Boston accent came out. This happened on those
occasions when she got a phone call from home, usually from a family
member who needed to spill the tea. She was the oldest of nine, so
this happened quite often, to my delight. What I wouldn’t give to tell
my five-year-old self to bust out that H4n recorder!

My formal introduction to linguistics came in my senior year of
college at Boise State University. I was a math major and desperately
seeking a one credit course that fit my schedule. I had two jobs and
went to school full time, so there was literally just one course that
fit the bill—Survey of the English Major. I had no idea what it meant
but I kind of liked literature, so why not! This course met once a
week and each session focused on the research of one English
department faculty member. Needless to say that I was hooked on
Professor Jon Dayley’s day. He started his presentation with a couple
of fieldwork stories, like when he wrestled a crocodile in Belize
while trying to figure out a phonological contrast and just kept on
interviewing. I knew right then and there I had to change my major and
the rest is history.

My current research projects bring me full-circle back to my
five-year-old curious wonderings. I am currently heading the Black
Boston Speaks project (https://blackbostonspeaks.netlify.app/) which
showcases linguistic diversity in Massachusetts Black communities.
Other work probes questions of social change and phonological
emergence in Michigan, and in African American Language across North
America.

I’d like to conclude by thinking about the ways in which community
serves to protect and to guide us. I have benefited immensely from the
support of so many linguists, most of whom are women who I admire.
Michal Temkin-Martinez, Jodi Tommerdahl, Suzanne Evans Wagner, James
N. Stanford, Sharese King, Nicole Holiday, and Stuart Davis. These
mentors have shown me how essential support and community are for us
to thrive.

The LINGUIST List is one of the ways in which we build community and
provide support in our field. Please donate to the List so that our
community can continue to grow and thrive. Every little bit goes a
long way.

----

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https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate



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