Amelia Tseng Assistant Professor World Languages and Cultures
- Degrees
- Ph.D Georgetown University, Linguistics
M.S. Georgetown University, Linguistics
M.A. Arizona State University, Spanish Linguistics
B.A. Magna Cum Laude Wellesley College, Spanish and English - Bio
-
Dr. Amelia Tseng is Assistant Professor in Spanish and Linguistics. Her research addresses how language shapes and is shaped by identity across immigrant generations in Latinx diasporic contexts, focusing on multilingualism, dialect variation, discourse, and the construction of ethnoracial and cultural identity.
Dr. Tseng coordinates the ĢƵ Linguistics Program. She is Principal Investigator on the Washington, D.C. Latinx Language and Identity project (DCLLIP). She is affiliate faculty in Anthropology and the Center for Latin American and Latino studies at ĢƵ and previously directed the Bilingual Education program. Dr. Tseng held a Research Associate appointment at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage from 2016-2022. Her university teaching and research have been recognized through awards from ĢƵ, Georgetown University, the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Tseng has appeared on National Public Radio and WUSA 9.
Listen to an interview here: http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=528816293:531824445
- See Also
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call ĢƵ Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Teaching
Fall 2024
-
LING-401 Sounds of Language & Meaning
-
SPAN-466 Spanish Language in the U.S.
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
Professional Presentations
Recent keynotes:
9th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language (NSSHL), 2022
New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 49, 2021
California Association for Bilingual Teacher Education (CABTE)/California Council for Teacher Education (CCTE) Annual Conference. 2021
3rd International Conference on the Sociolinguistics of Immigration (SLIMIG), 2018
Selected Publications
Coming June 30315! Empanadas, Pupusas, and Greens on the Side: Language and Latinidad in the Nation's Capital. Georgetown University Press.
"A new framework for understanding how language and identity intersect in ever-evolving America In the 1980s, Washington, DC—a predominantly African American, racially and economically segregated city with a strong local Black culture—became a hub of Latin American immigration. As the city's communities interacted, an identity both unique to DC and reflective of diverse Latin American cultures was born. Empanadas, Pupusas, and Greens on the Sideis the first linguistics book to explore how the Latinx community forged a new sense of home and identity in Washington. Using original ethnographic research—including interviews, narratives, and surveys—Tseng develops a new framework for understanding the relationship between race, identity, language, and culture, and she explains what happens when communities interact. Readers interested in the cultural history of Washington, Latinx history, and language and society will enjoy this rich study of language as a cross-cultural current in ever-evolving America."
Coming summer 2025! Tseng, Amelia, Chang, Charles Bond, Leal, Tania, Lee, Jin Sook, and Lopez, Belem. Research in Heritage Speaker Bilingualism. Taylor & Francis.
2023 Playground learning: African American English in Latinx linguistic repertoires.Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. DOI:10.1080/15348458.2023.2263568.
2023Nativizedexoticismin “el país de todas las sangres”.Ethnic and Racial Studies. DOI 10.1080/01419870.2023.2243306.
2021. Applied Linguistics, 113-135.
2021Tseng, Amelia and Hinrichs, Lars. Mobility, polylingualism,a nd change: Toward an updated sociolinguistics of diaspora.Journal of Sociolinguistics Special Issue on language and diaspora.
2020Flores, Nelson, Subtirelu, Nicholas, and Tseng, Amelia (eds.), Raciolinguistic perspectives on dual language education. Multilingual Matters.
2020. Tseng, Amelia and Hinrichs, Lars. Mobility and the English Language. In Aarts, Bas, McMahon, April, and Lars Hinrichs (ed.), Handbook of English Linguistics, 2nd ed. Wiley Blackwell.
2020 Cashman, Holly and Tseng, Amelia. Pragmatics and multilingualism. In Dale Koike and César Felix-Brasdefer (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Spanish Pragmatics (pp. 335-350). Routledge.
2020 Identity. In Susana Eisenchlas and Andrea Schalley (eds.), Handbook on Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance (pp. 109-129). Mouton de Gruyter.
2020 Normalization of dialect translinguistics in an internally diverse global-city diasporic community. In Jerry Won Lee and Sender Dovchin (eds.), Translinguistics: Negotiating Innovation and Ordinariness (pp. 146-160). Routledge.
2020 Advancing a sociolinguistics of complexity: Spanish-speaking identities in Washington, D.C. In Andrew Lynch (ed.), Handbook on Spanish in the Global City (pp. 330-354). Routledge.
2018 Abriendo closings in bilingual radio speech: Discourse strategies, code-switching, and the interactive construction of broadcast structures. Text & Talk, 38(4), 481-502.
2017 De Fina, Anna, and Tseng, Amelia. Narrative in the study of migrants. In Suresh Canagarajah (ed.), Handbook on Migration and Language (pp. 381-396). Routledge. Winner of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Book Prize 2020.
2011 DJ stances, station goals: Performing identity on a bilingual Arizona radio show. Proceedings of the 12th Symposium About Language and Society (SALSA): 2011-Austin, Texas Linguistics Forum (TLF), 54, 57-71.
2007 El paisaje lingüístico de Phoenix, AZ: una investigación preliminar (The linguistic landscape of Phoenix, AZ: a preliminary investigation). Proceedings of the University of Arizona Seventeenth Annual Symposium on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literature, Language, and Culture: 2007, 11-28.