Felicia Bisnath
[fə.ˈliː.s(ɪ).jə̞ ˈbɪs.næːθ]
she/her
felicia.bisnath at hvl dot no
CV
I am a postdoctoral researcher in Work Package 1 of the DEPICT (Signed language Depiction as an Engine for Promoting Inclusion, Communication, and Translation) project (PI: Ben Anible) funded by the Research Council of Norway (previously University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Contact, Cognition and Change Lab). From 2024 to 2026, I will investigate iconicity of depicting signs in Norwegian Sign Language experimentally and with corpus data, and perception of Norwegian mouthing in Norwegian Sign Language.
I am a contact linguist investigating cross-modal language contact in sign languages and its attitudinal and experiential correlates using a mix of experimental and survey tools, and quantitative and qualitative analysis. My research is guided by the study of marginalised phenomena and languages, marginalisation in linguistics, and a goal of capturing cross-linguistic and individual variation. I draw on anthropology, social science, and cognitive science, bringing together Creole linguistics, sign language linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. In my dissertation research (Chair: Savithry Namboodiripad), I investigated the attitudes of deaf and hard-of-hearing signers of ASL in the United States to English mouthing, and explored emergent means of categorising signers based on their self-reported experiences with English, ASL and ASL-English mixing. I did this using survey and experimental methods, multivariate statistical analysis, and regression modeling.
What's new?
Here are some of my recent activities.
New position
I started working as a postdoctoral researcher in the DEPICT project at Høgskulen på Vestlandet in Bergen, Norway in November!
Dissertation defense
I defended my dissertation titled "Attitudes to ASL-English Language Contact among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Users of ASL in United States" on July 24th! (Chair: Savithry Namboodiripad. Committee: Joseph C. Hill, Corrine Occhino, Patrice Beddor & Barbra Meek)
Linguistic Society of America Conference 2024
I presented part of my dissertation work on attitudes to mouthing in ASL at the LSA conference in New York. I also collaborated on a project led by Dr. Danielle Burgess and Dr. Marlyse Baptista (University of Pennsylvania) on pedagogical resources for including Creoles in undergraduate linguistics classes. More details soon!
Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship 2023-2024
I was awarded a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship that "supports outstanding doctoral candidates working on dissertations that are unusually creative, ambitious, and impactful".
Directions in Language Evolution (DILE) Workshop
I was invited to the Directions in Language Evolution (DILE) workshop hosted by the Center for Language Evolution Studies in Toruń, Poland, where I presented collaborative work on morphological complexity with the SignMorph group.
ALT14 Conference
I participated in the "Linguistic Typology and Diversity: Theory, Methods, and Ethics in Sign Language Typology" workshop convened by Dr. Erin Wilkinson & Dr. Lynn Hou at the 14th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT14) in Austin, Texas. I presented "Deconstructing notions of morphological ‘complexity': lessons from signed and spoken languages," co-authored by Felicia Bisnath, Marah Jaraisy, Hannah Lutzenberger, Rehana Omardeen, and Adam Schembri.
Research
"Mouthings in 37 signed languages: typology, ecology and ideology" Journal of Language Contact 16.1 [preprint]
Sign languages, like creoles, have been minoritised in linguistics. This makes perspectives on creoles the potential to illuminate the study of sign languages. A common way that sign languages are divided is into deaf and rural groups, based on social criteria. This distinction makes relationships between social and linguistic properties relevant. This paper investigates one such causal relationship, specifically whether extent of contact with spoken language(s) via institutionalised education translates into higher prevalence of the silent articulation of spoken words, mouthing. Across 37 sign languages (26 deaf; 11 rural) mouthing is prevalent regardless of language type, having been reported in 35 languages (25 deaf; 10 rural). This suggests that differences in language emergence do not produce a structural difference in terms of mouthing. Language documentation should include description of contact phenomena and ideologies, and comparison can avoid stereotyping of language groups based on tokenised cases (de facto prototypes).
Teaching
Below are some of the courses I have taught or assisted with:
- Epic Grammar Fails (LING 137)
- Academic Writing & Inquiry (ENG 125)
- Introduction to Psycholinguistics (LING 347/PSYCH 349)
- Introduction to Cognitive Science (CogSci 200)
- Structure and Usage of Caribbean Sign Language II
I also engage in pedagogical research with the CCLE lab (PI: Professor Marlyse Baptista, University of Pennsylvania), focusing on how to make linguistics more inclusive by incorporating underrepresented languages, like Creoles, into the curriculum.