About

Rob Podesva is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. His research examines the social significance of variation in the domains of segmental phonetics, prosody, and voice quality. He has a particular interest in how phonetic resources participate in the construction of identity, most notably gender, sexuality, race, and their intersections. His recent projects focus on the social meaning of non-modal voice qualities in interactional contexts and sociolinguistic variation in inland California and Washington, DC. Podesva holds degrees from Stanford University, including a PhD and MA, and a BA from Cornell University. He has previously served as an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University and has been involved in various academic and professional organizations, including directing the Interactional Sociophonetics Laboratory at Stanford. His contributions include co-editing key publications in linguistics and sociophonetics, and he has been recognized with awards such as the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association Best Student Abstract Award. His work integrates laboratory phonetics and sociolinguistics to explore how language variation and phonetic features relate to social identity and interaction.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Linguistics
• Computer Science
• Epistemology
• Cognitive psychology
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Gender studies
• Communication
• History

Selected publications

• Non-binary approaches to gender and sexuality

  Routledge eBooks · 2021 · 8 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Gender studies
  • Sociology

  The study of variation is by definition a quantitative enterprise, and the challenge is always to go beyond the descriptive power of numbers to explanation, seeking to understand the relations among levels of social structure from the macrosocial to practice on the ground. We view gender and sexuality as performative, and seek ways to operationalise quantitative variation studies in a more fluid context. We therefore organise the discussion around the two binaries that have dominated thought in the variation community and that are particularly problematic: gender as a male–female binary, and sexuality as a queer–straight binary. Through an extended discussion of creaky voice, we argue in this chapter that the social meaning of variation mediates the space between linguistic practice in situated interaction and the emergence of macrosocial categories corresponding to gender and sexuality. Taking a meaning-based approach to variation makes possible (quantitative) analyses that take stock of gender and sexuality without reducing either to categories that may not be at issue in the interactional contexts in which variation is produced.

  PublisherDOI

• The Role of the Body in Language Change

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Linguistics
  • Psychology

  It is generally accepted that the body plays an important stylistic role, but few scholars embark on multimodal investigations of variation. In this chapter I discuss the results of two studies on the realization of the GOAT vowel to show that bodily practices occur alongside, and indeed can influence, linguistic behavior, both from moment to moment (through expressions of affect like smiling) and duratively (through facial postures like an open jaw). Study 1 reveals that GOAT exhibits a higher F2 when it occurs in the context of smiling, suggesting some sound changes may be advancing during moments when the body is used to express heightened affect. Study 2 illustrates that the more durative embodied practice of maintaining an open-jaw setting has had lowering consequences across the vowel system of California English – even for GOAT, which is typically described as undergoing fronting rather than lowering. The proposal advanced here assumes that linguistic variation is meaningful and that a non-trivial number of a linguistic variant's social meanings derives from embodied practice. And crucially, meaning – some of it embodied – can initiate or influence the trajectory of change.

  PublisherDOI

• Index

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-07-30

  paratextSenior author

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  PublisherDOI

• Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theoretical Foundations

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 31 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  How expansive are the social meanings inferred by a nonstandard syntactic variant, and how are these social meanings constructed? This chapter suggests that the social meanings of syntax lie at the nexus of pragmatics and social distribution. Furthermore, the analysis shows that certain social meanings are enriched when syntactic items co-occur with specific phonetic variants. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of adolescents, this chapter focuses on the social meanings of negative concord by exploring the correlation between social class, social practice, topic of talk, nonstandard phonetic variants and instances of negative concord. Negative concord increases across social groups in-line with their placement on a pro-/anti-school continuum, but a topic analysis suggests that this a consequence of different groups talking about different things: there is more negative concord in talk about delinquent behaviour than there is in talk about non-delinquent behaviour (irrespective of social group). In exploring why negative concord is a useful device for talking about delinquency, the pragmatics of the construction itself are examined, exposing a relationship between social distribution and pragmatic function. Finally, an analysis of the relationship between negative concord and co-occurring phonetic variants suggests that different levels of linguistic architecture work synergistically to create social meaning.

  PublisherDOI

• 2. THE LOW VOWELS IN California's CENTRAL VALLEY

  Publication of the American Dialect Society · 2016-12-01 · 44 citations

  article

  Research Article| December 01 2016 2. THE LOW VOWELS IN California's CENTRAL VALLEY Annette D'Onofrio; Annette D'Onofrio Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Penelope Eckert; Penelope Eckert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Robert J. Podesva; Robert J. Podesva Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Teresa Pratt; Teresa Pratt Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Janneke Van Hofwegen Janneke Van Hofwegen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Publication of the American Dialect Society (2016) 101 (1): 11–32. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-3772879 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Annette D'Onofrio, Penelope Eckert, Robert J. Podesva, Teresa Pratt, Janneke Van Hofwegen; 2. THE LOW VOWELS IN California's CENTRAL VALLEY. Publication of the American Dialect Society 1 December 2016; 101 (1): 11–32. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-3772879 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Dialect SocietyThe Publication of the American Dialect Society Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2016 by the American Dialect Society2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Stance as a Window into the Language-Race Connection

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2016-11-03 · 17 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter examines how two linguistic features commonly associated with African American English enable speakers to take stances about race. The analysis is based on the use of (-t/d) deletion and falsetto in sociolinguistic interviews with residents of Washington, DC. While broad distributional analyses reveal that African American speakers produce both features more frequently than white speakers, the explanation for this pattern can only be found by attending to the interactional moments when speakers use these features the most. For example, an African American woman uses her highest rates of (-t/d) deletion when talking about gentrification, as opposed to other topics that she does not characterize in racial terms. Similarly, African American women generally produce their phonetically strongest instantiations of falsetto when negatively evaluating gentrification and racism. I conclude by underscoring the importance of viewing components of ethnolinguistic repertoires as resources for taking stances about race and racially charged issues.

  PublisherDOI

• Cans and cants: Computational potentials for multimodality with a case study in head position

  Journal of Sociolinguistics · 2016-11-01 · 11 citations

  articleSenior author

  As the study of embodiment and multimodality in interaction grows in importance, there is a need for novel methodological approaches to understand how multimodal variables pattern together along social and contextual lines, and how they systematically coalesce in communicative meanings. In this work, we propose to adopt computational tools to generate replicable annotations of bodily variables: these can be examined statistically to understand their patterning with other variables across diverse speakers and interactional contexts, and can help organize qualitative analyses of large datasets. We demonstrate the possibilities thereby with a case study in head cant (side‐to‐side tilt of the head) in a dataset of video blogs and laboratory‐collected interactions, computationally extracting cant and prosody from video and audio and analyzing their interactions, looking at gender in particular. We find that head cant indexes an orientation towards the interlocutor and a sense of shared understanding, can serve a ‘bracketing’ function in interaction (for speakers to create parentheticals or asides), and has gendered associations with prosodic markers and interactional discourse particles.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Influences on the Degree of Stop Voicing in Inland California

  Scholarly Commons (University of Pennsylvania) · 2015-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper examines social influences on the realization of voiced stops in inland California. We analyzed sociolinguistic interviews with 62 white residents from Redding, Merced, and Bakersfield (which mark the northern, middle, and southern points of California’s Central Valley), balanced for sex, class, age, and whether a speaker earns their livelihood off the land. We follow Jaciewicz, Fox, and Lyle (2009) in examining the extent of voicing during stop closures (duration of voicing during closure relative to total duration of closure), and also adopt a novel measure of the magnitude of voicing, which captures the intensity of a stop closure relative to the following vowel. Mixed effects linear regression models were constructed for both voicing measures, with a number of linguistic and social predictors considered in addition to random effects. Results show that the extent of voicing measure was insufficiently sensitive to differentiate speakers, as nearly everyone exhibited voicing throughout the closure. The voicing intensity measure, however, was shown to reveal significant effects of place of articulation, closure duration, and ties to the land. Most importantly, speakers who earn their livelihood off the land exhibit significantly stronger voiced stops than those who do not. We argue that even though strongly voiced stops likely entered California during a large-scale in-migration of Southerners during the Dust Bowl (Jaciewicz et al. 2009 report more extensive voicing among women from the South compared to the Midwest), they have since taken on locally significant indexicalities reflecting the values and ideals of land-oriented communities throughout the Central Valley (and do not simply mean “Southern”). Our findings also raise questions about where the linguistic limits of socially structured variation lie, given the systematic social patterning observed here for low-level phonetic details (i.e., voicing intensity) that likely operate far below the level of consciousness.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Constraints on the social meaning of released /t/: A production and perception study of U.S. politicians

  Language Variation and Change · 2015-02-20 · 84 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Previous studies on released /t/ collectively suggest that the linguistic feature is associated with intelligence and education, social meanings that can be recruited in constructing articulate personas. This study examines the production of released /t/ by six prominent U.S. political figures, as well as the social meanings listeners attribute to the variant. Employing a matched guise technique facilitated by digital stimulus manipulation, we find that the social meanings associated with released /t/ are constrained by linguistic and social factors. Regarding the former, word-medial /t/ releases carry stronger social meanings than those appearing word-finally. With respect to social factors, listener interpretations vary according to the identity of the speaker and knowledge of how frequently particular speakers produce /t/ releases. Thus, even though conventionalized associations between linguistic forms and meanings can be drawn upon to construct articulate personas, not all speakers can do so with equal effectiveness.

  PublisherDOI

• Country ideology and the California Vowel Shift

  Language Variation and Change · 2015-06-08 · 81 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Addressing the dearth of variation research in nonurban, noncoastal regions of California, this study examines the extent to which speakers in Redding, an inland community just north of the Central Valley, participate in the California Vowel Shift (CVS). We acoustically analyze the fronting of the back vowels boot and boat , the raising of ban and backing of bat , and the merger of bot and bought, in sociolinguistic interviews with 30 white lifelong residents. Results reveal a change in apparent time for all analyzed variables, indicating the CVS's progression through the community, though not as robust as in urban, coastal areas. Additionally, we provide evidence that shifting patterns for different vowels are structured by the ideological divide between town and country. Thus, as the CVS spreads through Redding, speakers utilize particular features of the shift differently, negotiating identities relevant in California's nonurban locales.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Chaya Halberstam

  9 shared

• Elaine W. Chun

  9 shared

• Evan Kent

  Center for Applied Linguistics

  9 shared

• Shani Bechhofer

  University of Southern California

  9 shared

• Amy Zwas

  University of Southern California

  9 shared

• Patricia A. Duff

  9 shared

• Mark Kligman

  9 shared

• Mara Benjamin

  Mount Holyoke College

  9 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Stanford University

• M.A.

  Stanford University

• B.A.

  Cornell University

Awards & honors

• Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association Best Student Abs…
• Graduate Fellowship, Department of Linguistics, Stanford Uni…