Department of Spanish and Portuguese

My name is Estefany Sosa and I am Ph.D. student in the Hispanic Linguistics program with a minor in Computational Linguistics. I received a B.S. in Journalism and a dual M.A. in General Linguistics and Spanish Language & Literature from San José State University. Broadly speaking, my research focuses on Central American Spanish phonetics/phonology and semantics from a sociolinguistic standpoint; however, I also work with other Spanish dialects and languages. Some of my current projects include the analysis of verbs of possession in Central American Spanish and Mexican Spanish varieties, pejoration and appropriation of slurs in Salvadoran Spanish, and the social variation of fricatives and rhotics in Salvadoran Spanish and Dominican Spanish.

I received the FLAS fellowship to take part of an intensive Nahuatl language and culture program during the summer of 2023. Currently, I am studying Nahuatl (spoken in the Huasteca region in Veracruz, Mexico) at the intermediate level through Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ). I am also learning Nawat/Nahuat (spoken in El Salvador) independently. Furthermore, I am interested in language reclaiming initiatives and non-extractive linguistic research in Nahua-speaking communities in El Salvador and Mexico. However, I am mainly interested in Nawat/Nahuat as it is the only indigenous language spoken in El Salvador today.