Shellie Chiavetta
Shellie Chiavetta is a senior linguistics major from Derry, NH. After completing field research for the course “A Sociolinguistic Survey,” she was inspired to expand her study on adverbial modifiers and gender, and applied for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) award. She was interested in uncovering any pattern of usage, and in discovering “if age or external influence would have any effect on that usage.” Shellie explains, “I learned a great deal about the ‘layering’ of language; so much can be conveyed in the smallest units of speech. I also learned a lot about doing field research on my own: setting up a study and executing it, analyzing the results and discovering something—all of which was highly rewarding.” She found it interesting to have her hypotheses proved incorrect, and says she “learned that much more from the project by getting unexpected results.” After graduating in May, 2006, Shellie hopes to work with languages, specifically Japanese, and become involved with translation. Her ultimate goal is to live and work in Japan for a few years.
Dr. Naomi Nagy
Dr. Naomi Nagy, associate professor in the English department and linguistics program coordinator, has taught at UNH for ten years. She specializes in sociolinguistics, studying “variation in how people speak and how that is used to represent identity.” A seasoned mentor, she has worked with five SURF awardees, as well as with several students on honors projects, theses, and independent studies. Regarding Shellie’s research, Dr. Nagy says, “I very much enjoyed this project. I like thinking about research designs and I enjoyed helping Shellie interpret her data, especially since that type of data hadn’t been collected before.”
Read Shellie Chiavetta’s research brief, That was Totally Intense! A Study of Emphatic Adverbial Modifiers in Male and Female Speech >>
