Evan Hazenberg
Associate Faculty (English)

Research

I'm a variationist sociolinguistic and sociophonetician, which means I'm interested in differences in the way that people speak, and what those differences can tell us about the processes of linguistic and social change.

I'm interested in both the linguistic dimensions of language variation (what variation and change can tell us about how language works as a complex system) and in its social dimensions (what it can tell us about how we go about being members of our various communities).  I have a background working with gendered identity and sexuality - and this remains a passion of mine - but I'm also interested in other dimensions of identity.  I'm currently piloting a project exploring thresholds of salience in regional varieties of English in the UK, with an aim to developing a broader understanding of which variables in any given system take on socially-interpretable meaning, and how that level of meaning influences the spread and diffusion of change.