Samantha
Jackson
Linguist
I am an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto. I work in the Department of Linguistics (51%) and the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (49%).
My research is in the field of sociolinguistics. Specifically, I investigate how immigrants to Canada (like me) who speak with a non-Canadian English accent might be perceived as less (or more) employable when prospective employers hear them. I have completed three papers on this study thus far (see Publications.) I am currently designing intervention strategies we can implement to reduce accent/language discrimination in the workplace.
Previously, as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, I documented the experiences of newcomers to Canada who are engaged in remote work and analyzed documents related to gig work governance. Before this, I was a Provost’s postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Language Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
I like to conduct Linguistics research that directly addresses societal problems. My doctoral work aimed at establishing phonological acquisition norms for Trinidadian preschoolers, since we currently lack such descriptions. This work took me to all corners of the island over three months to gather data from 147 children. I am still working with this data to describe morphosyntactic norms. Currently, I am part of a cross-disciplinary team looking into how competent large language models are at communicating in written Trinidadian English Creole.
On a recreational level, I enjoy conlanging. My final year undergraduate project was an invented Spanish-based Creole in Cuba called Ecaboro and since then, I’ve been interested in doing more projects like that. My dream job might be inventing languages for TV/film, à la Na’vi, Dothraki or Belter Creole. More recently, I’ve really gotten into doing 1000-piece puzzles. My favourite brands are Ravensburger and Cobble Hill. Also, I really love food so I enjoy checking out new cafes and restaurants.
Key interests: sociolinguistics, raciolinguistics, language acquisition, Creole contexts, conlanging
