Jim Michnowicz

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Bio

Dr. Jim Michnowicz is Head of the Department of World Languages and Cultures and Professor of Hispanic linguistics at NC State University. He received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics at Penn State University in 2006, with a focus on language contact, variation and sociolinguistics. He has been on faculty at NC State since 2006, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Hispanic linguistics. In 2018, he received the College of Humanities & Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award, and was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Teachers at NC State in 2019.

His research focuses on language contact with Spanish, both in Yucatan, Mexico and in North Carolina, and his publications examine a range of phonetic and morphosyntactic features in order to better understand the linguistic outcomes of different contexts of language and dialect contact. Other research interests include language shift and maintenance, along with systems of address forms in the Spanish-speaking world.

Office Hours

• Click here to make an appointment with me.

Projects

Research Publications

Books

• Selected proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, Jim Michnowicz & Robin Dodsworth (Eds). 2011. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Reviewed on LinguistList here.

Peer-reviewed articles/chapters

• Michnowicz, Jim. 2025. “Language change across real and apparent-time: case studies from Yucatan Spanish”. Language & Linguistics Compass 19(3).
• Ronquest, Rebecca, Maggie Payne & Jim Michnowicz. 2025. “Intrusive Vowels in Yucatan Spanish: A Sociophonetic Analysis”. Hispanic Studies Review 9(1).
• Vaughn, Stevi, Rebecca Ronquest & Jim Michnowicz. 2024. “Ven, Vení, Venga: Forms of address among Argentines and Central Americans in North Carolina”. In Gradoville, M. & McKinnon, S. (Eds.). Recent Developments in Hispanic Linguistics: Studies in Structure, Variation, and Bilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 172-196.
• Michnowicz, Jim, Rebecca Ronquest, Sarah Chetty, Georgia Green & Stephanie Oliver. 2023. “Spanish in the Southeast: What a swarm of variables can tell us about a newly-forming bilingual community”. Languages 8, 168.
• Michnowicz, Jim, Sonya Trawick & Rebecca Ronquest. 2023. “Spanish Language Maintenance and Shift in a Newly-Forming Community in the Southeastern United States: Insights From a Large-Class Survey”. Hispanic Studies Review 7(2).
• Michnowicz, Jim, Rebecca Ronquest, Bailey Ambrister, Hannah Bain, Nick Chisholm, Rebecca Green, Lindsey Bull & Anne Elkins. 2023. “Perceptions of inclusive language in the Spanish of the Southeast: data from a large classroom project”. Spanish in Context, https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.00084.mic
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2023. “Real and apparent (time) changes in Yucatan Spanish: the case of /bdg/”. In Fernández Cuenca, S., Judy, T. & Miller, L. (Eds.) Innovative Approaches to Research in Hispanic Linguistics: Regional, Diachronic, and Learner Profile Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 130-151.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2021. “Apparently real changes: Revisiting final (-m) in Yucatan Spanish”. In M. Díaz-Campos (Ed.), Handbook of variationist approaches to Spanish. London: Routledge. 249-262.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Lucía Planchón. 2020. “Sheísmo in Montevideo Spanish: Not (yet) identical to Buenos Aires”. In S. Sessarego, J. Colomina-Almiñana & A. Rodríguez-Riccelli (Eds.). Variation and Evolution: Aspects of Language Contact and Contrast across the Spanish-Speaking World. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 163-186.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Alex Hyler. 2020. “The changing accent of Yucatan Spanish”. In R. Rao (Ed.). Spanish phonetics and phonology in contact: Studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 36-62.
• Ronquest, Rebecca, Jim Michnowicz, Eric Wilbanks & Claudia Cortés. 2020.“Examining the (mini-)variable swarm in the Spanish of the Southeast”. In A. Morales-Front, M. Ferreira, R. Leow & C. Sanz (Eds.). Hispanic linguistics: Current issues and new directions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 303-325.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Alex Hyler. 2020. “The acento pujado in Yucatan Spanish: prosodic rhythm and the search for the yucateco accent”. In L. Ortiz, R. Guzzardo Tamargo & M. González Rivera (Eds.). Hispanic Contact Linguistics: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 115-136.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Vannessa Quintana Sarria. 2020. “A new look at forms of address in the Spanish of Cali, Colombia”. Hispanic Studies Review, 4(2). 121-139.
• Trawick, Sonya & Jim Michnowicz. 2019. “Glottal Insertion before Vowel-Initial Words in the Spanish of Asunción, Paraguay”. In G. Thomson & S. Alvord (Eds.). Contact, community and connections: Current approaches to Spanish in multilingual populations. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press. 147-171.
• Michnowicz, Jim, Alex Hyler, James Shepherd & Sonya Trawick. 2018. “Spanish in North Carolina: English-origin loanwords in a newly forming Hispanic community”. In J. Reaser, E. Wilbanks, W. Wolfram & K. Wojcik (Eds.). Language Diversity in the New South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. 289-305.
• Michnowicz, Jim, J. Scott Despain & Rebecca Gorham. 2016. “The changing system of Costa Rican pronouns of address: tuteo, voseo, and ustedeo”. In S. Rivera-Mills and M.I. Moyna (Eds.). Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 243-265.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Laura Kagan. 2016. “On glottal stops in Yucatan Spanish”. In S. Sessarego & F. Tejedo (Eds.). Spanish language and sociolinguistic analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 219-239.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2015. “Maya-Spanish contact in Yucatan, Mexico: Context and sociolinguistic implications”. In S. Sessarego and M. González Rivera (Eds.). New Perspectives on Hispanic Contact Linguistics in the Americas. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. 21-42.
• Barnes, Hilary & Michnowicz, Jim. 2015. “Broad focus declaratives in Veneto- Spanish bilinguals: Peak alignment and language contact”. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8(1). 35-57.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2015. “Subject pronoun expression in Yucatan Spanish”. In A. Carvalho, R. Orozco, and N. Shin (Eds.). Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-dialectal perspective. Washington: Georgetown University Press. 103-121.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Carpenter, Lindsey. 2013. “Voiceless stop aspiration in Yucatan Spanish: a sociolinguistic analysis”. Spanish in Context 10:3. 410-437.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Barnes, Hilary. 2013. “A sociolinguistic analysis of pre-nuclear peak alignment in Yucatan Spanish”. In C. Howe, S.E. Blackwell & M. Lubbers Quesada (Eds.). Selected proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 221-235.
• Barnes, Hilary & Michnowicz, Jim. 2013. “Peak alignment in bilingual Chipilo Spanish”. In A. M. Carvalho & S. Beudrie (Eds.).  Selected proceedings of the 6thWorkshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 109-122.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2012. “Thestandardization of Yucatan Spanish: Family case studies in Izamal and Mérida”. In K. Geeslin and M. Díaz-Campos (Eds.). Selected proceedings of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2010. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 102-115.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2011. “Dialect standardization in Merida, Yucatan: The case of /bdg/”. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 18. 191-212.
• Bishop, Kelley & Michnowicz, Jim. 2010. “Forms of address in Chilean Spanish”. Hispania 93.3, 2010. 413-429.
• Michnowicz, Jim & Place, Soraya. 2010. “Perceptions of secondperson singular pronoun use in San Salvador, El Salvador”. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 3.2. 353-377.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2009. “Intervocalic voiced stops in Yucatan Spanish: a case of contact induced language change?” in M. Lacorte & J. Leeman (Eds.).  Español en Estados Unidos y en otros contextos de contacto: Sociolingüística, ideología y pedagogía. Madrid: Iberoamericana. 67-84.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2008. “Final nasal variation in Merida, Yucatan”. Spanish in Context 5.2. 278–303.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2007. “El habla de Yucatám: final –m in a dialect in contact” in J. Holmquist et al. (Ed.). Selected proceedings of The Third Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (WSS3). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 38-43.
• Michnowicz, Jim. 2006. “Final –m in Yucatan Spanish: A Rapid and Anonymous Survey” in J.P. Montreuil (Ed.). New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. 2: Phonetics, phonology, and dialectology: selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 155-166.

Funded Research

• Language and Social Networks in Raleigh-Durham (with Rebecca Ronquest and Robin Dodsworth)
  • $4000 from the Provost’s Professional Experience Program
• The emergence and analysis of large bilingual speech communities (with Rebecca Ronquest and Robin Dodsworth)
  •  $4000 from the CHASS Faculty Research and Development Program (FRDP)
• A pilot study of Spanish in Raleigh-Durham (with Rebecca Ronquest)
  • $4000 from the CHASS  Faculty Research and Development Program (FRPD)

Presentations

Recent presentations/invited talks:

• Invited plenary discussant, 2023 Inaugural SEC Spanish Consortium Conference.  University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS. March, 2023 (Virtual).
• “El español en el sudeste de los Estados Unidos: La creación de una nueva comunidad bilingüe”. Invited talk at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. October 2022. (Virtual).
• “Spanish in the Southeast: Insights and future directions”. Invited plenary address at the Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, Georgia Tech/University of Georgia, Atlanta, GA. April 2022. (Virtual)
• Michnowicz, Jim. “A variable swarm analysis of Yucatan Spanish: the intersection of three traditional dialect forms”. Presentation at the Spanish linguistics in North Carolina/the Southeast 2023 conference at Davidson College. February, 2023.
• Michnowicz, Jim, David Natvig & Joseph Salmons. “Yucatan Spanish VOT: Bilingual phonological representations and sociophonetics”. Presentation at the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) 2023 conference in Denver, CO. January, 2023.
• Vaughn, Stevi, Rebecca Ronquest and Jim Michnowicz. “Ven, vení, venga: a study of el voseo in North Carolina”. Presentation at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2022 conference at Arizona State University. November, 2022 (Virtual).
• Michnowicz, Jim. “Real and apparent (time) changes in Yucatan Spanish: the case of /bdg/”. Presentation at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2021 conference at Wake Forest University. October, 2021 (Virtual).
• Michnowicz, Jim & Rebecca Ronquest. “Spanish Language Shift and Maintenance in North Carolina: Insights from a large-class survey”. Presentation at the Spanish linguistics in North Carolina (SLINKI) 2021 conference at NC State University. March, 2021 (Virtual).