Contact Information
Office hours: by appointment
Research Areas
Research Interests
Sociophonetics of French and Romance languages
Language variation and change
Social networks and the diffusion of linguistic innovations
Speech prosody
Language and minorities in Europe
Research Description
In my research and teaching, I focus on socially meaningful phonetic and lexical variation and change in French, with special emphasis on multiethnic urban speech styles in France. I have been conducting and directing research in both fieldwork and laboratory settings as well as corpus-based studies in phonetics and sociolinguistics for over twenty years. In recent years, I also undertook the study of the influence of social actors and institutions on minority and standard language planning and policies in Europe, and simulated with computer scientists the influence of such actors on the spread of innovations in models of densely connected social networks. My upcoming book, Home Turf: Multiethnic Speech Styles in French, deals with the cultural context, origins, and linguistic features of working-class Parisian French in contact with immigrant languages in Paris.
I have been directing PhD dissertations and advising graduate students in the humanities and the social sciences in three departments and two research centers since 2000. My grants and awards include the Summer Research Award of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2001), IPRH-UIUC faculty fellowship (2003-2004), and two NSF grants (2010-2013, 2022-2025). My most recent grant is in collaboration with a team of engineers at UIUC and John Hopkins University on inclusive automatic speech recognition: https://bit.ly/3ENc0hn. See the announcement by our School: https://bit.ly/3vJVbjk.
I also teach and develop courses that foreground French around the world. Most recently, in collaboration with students and faculty in French Cultural Studies, I developed a General Education course entitled ‘French in US Minority Cultures’ that traces the spread and decline of French as a heritage language in the American Midwest from the early modern times until the 20th century. The course will be offered for the first time in Spring 2023.
Education
Linguistics (Sciences du Langage), Ph.D., University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle
Russian and Slavic Languages, M.A., ELTE, Eötvös Loránd University
French and Romance Languages, M.A., ELTE, Eötvös Loránd University
European Union Studies, Graduate Minor, European Union Center, University of Nancy II, France
Additional Campus Affiliations
Affiliate Faculty, Department of Linguistics
Affiliate Faculty, European Union Center, UIUC
Affiliate Faculty, Center for Global Studies, UIUC
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Books
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. Home Turf: Multiethnic Speech Styles in French, under review.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, Heather Burnett, Mireille Tremblay, and Douglas Kibbee. French: A Linguistic Introduction. Second revised and extended edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, under contract.
L’Accent des banlieues. Aspects prosodiques du français populaire en contact avec les langues de l’immigration. Paris: L’Harmattan, Séries “Espaces discursifs”, 2010.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, Douglas Kibbee, and Fred Jenkins. French: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Edited Volumes
Interfaces in Romance Linguistics, Selected Proceedings of the 51st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), UIUC, April-May 2021, with MacDonald, J., Beristain, A., and Turner, R., Special Issue of Isogloss, Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory Series, volume 18, expected in 2022
Convergence and Divergence in Laurentian French, with Hirschensohn, J., Theme Special Issue of the Journal of French Language Studies, volume 26, issue 2, 2016
Murdoch, H. Adlai, and Zsuzsanna Fagyal. Francophone Cultures and Geographies of Identity. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
Arregi, Karlos, Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Silvina Montrul, and Annie Tremblay. Romance Linguistics 2008: Interactions in Romance. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008.
Selected Book Contributions
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. “Phonetic variation and social meaning in ethnic styles in French,” In: Morand, A-M., Schmid, S. and Schwab, S. (eds.), The Sounds of European Multiethnolects, Philadelphia, John Benjamins, invited, forthcoming in 2023.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. 2022. “Standardization and language regimes in Europe: the case of France, Spain, and the United Kingdom,” In: Mufwene, S. and Escobar, A-M. (eds), Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, volume 2, chapter 37, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (May 2022), 228-253.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, and Justin Davidson. "Sociophonetics." Manual of Romance phonetics and phonology, compiled by Gabriel Christoph, compiled by Randall Gess, compiled by Trudel Meisenburg. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2019, p. invited.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. "Standardization and language regimes in Europe: the case of France, Spain, and the United Kingdom." Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, compiled by Salikoko Mufwene, compiled by Anna Maria Escobar. Cambridge, under contract: Cambridge University Press, 2019, p. invited.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. "Sociolinguistic variation and pluricentricity." Sociolinguistic change across the Spanish-speaking world: Case studies in honor of Anna María Escobar, New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2015, p. 215-220.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, and Christopher Stewart. "Prosodic style-shifting in preadolescent peer-group interactions in a working-class suburb of Paris." Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas, edited by Friederike Kern, edited by Margret Selting. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011, p. 75–99.
Selected Journal Articles
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. “Old and New in Variation in French Digital Media: A Commentary,” Special Issue on French Variation in Digital Media, Journal of French Language Studies, in press.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, and Eivind Torgersen. "Prosodic rhythm, cultural background, and the performance of adolescent urban vernaculars in Paris: case studies and comparisons." Journal of French Language Studies, vol. 28, no. 2, 2018, p. 165-179.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. "Convergence, divergence et filiation linguistique: retour à l’étude panlectale de la variation en français." Journal of French Language Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2016, p. 163-166.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, Samarth Swarup, Anna Maria Escobar, Les Gasser, and Kiran Lakkaraju. "Centers and peripheries: Network roles in language change." Lingua, vol. 120, no. 8, 2010, p. 2061-2079.
“Comparing single and double sayings of the German response token ja and the role of prosody: A conversation analytic perspective,” with Golato, A., Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(3), 2008, 1-30
“Acoustic aspects of vowel harmony in French,” with Nguyen, N., Journal of Phonetics, 36 (1), 2008, 1-27.
Recent Publications
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna "Monolingualism vs. multilingualism in Western Europe: language regimes in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom". and Mufwene, Salikoko Escobar, Anna Maria (ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact: Volume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure. Chapter 9, Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. 2022.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. "Review: K. Chenoweth's The prosthetic tongue: Printing technology and the rise of the French language". Language in Society. 2021, 50(3). 482-483. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404521000154
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna. "Review: N. Peter's Gascon et français chez les Israélites d’Aquitaine : documents et inventaire lexical". Journal of French Language Studies. 2021, 31(1). 109-110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269519000279
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna "Sociophonetics"., Gabriel, Christoph Gess, Randall Meisenburg, Trudel (ed.). Manual of Romance Phonetics and Phonology. Manuals of Romance Linguistics. De Gruyter. 2021, 343-374.
Nicholas, Jessica A., Zsuzsanna Fagyal and Christopher Carignan What’s with your nasals? Perception of nasal vowel contrasts in two dialects of French. 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 05 Aug 2019, Melbourne, Australia, Paper, 2019.