About Me

I'm Elizabeth, a fifth-year PhD student. I'm ABD, but sometimes that D part seems quite far away! This blog documents my process of dissertating - working on my dissertation. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's just mundane - but it's all necessary!

I'm a linguist, which does not mean I'm a translator. (Don't worry, that's a common misconception and I won't hold it against you.) I currently live 1500 miles away from my university. It wasn't always that way, but it's working out that way for me to write. This means I can live with my husband - yay! I plan to finish in May of 2010. The money runs out then, as does my patience and commitment!

My research is actually somewhat interesting! I'm looking at foreign accents and whether listeners can (a) determine the accent they hear and (b) tell the difference between authentic and imitated accents. In addition to this, I'm looking at the imitated accents I gathered to (a) investigate the difference between free (spontaneous) imitations and modeled imitations (spoken after hearing an authentic accent), specifically exploring vowel differences, and (b) examine how this reflects on salience and stereotypes.

Feel free to comment, and thanks for stopping by!


(This should go without saying, but just in case: Everything on this site is copyrighted by me. Please don't steal anything - ideas, data, etc. It's probably not that great anyway. If you're interested in what I'm doing, please contact me at egbrunner [at] gmail.)