Sarah Braun, M.A.

Contact

Dear all,

please note: as of March 2020, I am no longer working at the University od Duisburg-Essen.

Please get in touch with Prof. Dr. Raymond Hickey if you have any questions regarding classes you have completed with me. 

Best,
Sarah Braun

Curriculum Vitae

Sarah studied at the Ruhr-University Bochum where she obtained her B.A. in English Studies and Romance Philology Spanish in 2013. Her Bachelor's thesis was titled "Media Discourse, Language Attitude and the 2011 Census in Canada". Sarah continued her studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum and obtained her M.A. in English Studies with a focus on linguistics as well as her M.Ed. in English and Spanish in 2017. Again, her Master's thesis dealt with language attitudes, only this time taking a global perspective: "Language Attitudes towards Supraregional Accents of English". During her student life she also studied abroad at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, WI, USA (2011-12) and at the Universidad de Córdoba in Spain (2015). Her PhD project investigates the interface of non-linguists' perceptions of language variation and their language production in Wisconsin.

Research Interests

  • Sociolinguistics
  • Language Ideology
  • Perceptual Dialectology & Language Attitudes
  • Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism
  • Language Variation & Change
  • Varieties of English (esp. in North America)

Classes taught

  • Varieties of English
  • Phonetics/Phonology and Morphology: Major Models and Research Methods
  • Folk Linguistics
  • Differences between Spoken and Written English
  • English Lexicology
  • Introduction to Linguistics
  • Acadmic Writing and Presentation (@ Ruhr-University Bochum's SFB 837 Summer School 2017)

Publications & Talks

Publications:

Braun, Sarah. 2020. "Mapping Perceptions of Language Variation in Wisconsin: On 'Goin' Fishin' at My Cabin Don't Cha Know' and 'Normal Like Me'". American Speech 95(1): 82-102.

Talks:

"Degree of ‘Outdoorsyness’ as a Predictor of Language Variation in Central Wisconsin". Poster presentation at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48 (NWAV), University of Oregon-Eugene, USA, October 12, 2019.

"Mapping Perceptions of Language Variation in Wisconsin: A View from Marathon County, WI". Poster presentation at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 46 (NWAV), University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, November 3, 2017.