Whitney Chappell
Associate Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures, Honors College
Contact
- MH 4.01.14
- whitney.chappell@utsa.edu
Bio
Languages: English, español
I’m originally from the Chicago area, and I’ve lived in San Antonio since 2013. (It’s been a while, but if you get me excited about a topic—try my kids, a podcast, or a linguistic phenomenon—you can still hear my Northern Cities vowels.) As you might have guessed by now, I’m a language person, with a particular interest in how language varies across regions, groups, and individuals. This fascination led me to pursue a B.A. in Spanish and English at the University of Illinois, an M.A. in English (Linguistics) at Northern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in Spanish Linguistics at the Ohio State University. I’m so lucky to live and work in San Antonio because I love the bilingual and bicultural character of the city (although I do not love the summer heat).
Research
How do social groups use language differently and why? How do we negotiate our identities and stances through the way we speak? These are the kinds of big questions I ask in my research. More specifically, I study variable pronunciations, which might seem trivial at first glance, but we say so much about who we are and instantly know so much about other people based on the phonetic features we use (e.g., where we come from, how old we are, what we are like, what we do for a living, who we vote for, etc.). Like so many people in San Antonio, I’m particularly passionate about the Spanish language, and my research centers the linguistic practices of diverse Spanish-speaking communities, including monolingual groups, multilingual groups, heritage Spanish speakers, and learners of Spanish as a second language. If you have an interest in linguistics or would like to pursue a research project, please reach out! I’d love to collaborate.
Teaching subject areas
I enjoy offering all sorts of language-based classes in English and Spanish, including Language and Gender, Bilingualism, Dialects of Spanish, Accents and Identities, Forensic Linguistics, and How the Internet is Changing Language, among many others. I like them all, but my favorite classes are related to Sociolinguistics and Language Variation. There’s nothing more satisfying than watching students uncover linguistic and social patterns that they never even realized were there! Discovering how and why we speak the way we do changes the way we view the world.
Favorite things about teaching in Honors: Working with interesting and motivated students!
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