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Congratulations to Linguistics graduate students Romina Hashemi, Elijah Lazar and Danica Reid for receiving federal funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Elijah and Romina have received funding from the SSHRC , and Danica is receiving support from the SSHRC . 

From deconstructing European Union institutional discourse on asylum seeking and migration, to exploring how slogans are borrowed and co-opted, to creating learning resources about syllables in n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n (Thompson River Salish), these LING grad students are reaching new heights in the pursuit of knowledge. 

If you are considering joining the Linguistics graduate program, see the Admissions and FAQs page. Here you will find details on the application process. The application window will be open from October 15, 2025, to January 17, 2026. The admissions page will soon house a list of which members of faculty are accepting students. 

Romina Hashemi
Co-opting constructions: cross-linguistic, multimodal slogans as a window into intercommunity productivity

鈥淟and Back鈥�, 鈥淟ibert茅, 脡galit茅, Fraternit茅鈥濃�攕logans define our social and political movements. Using Construction Grammar鈥攚hich posits that language is constructed of form-meaning pairs called constructions鈥攎y research project looks at slogans and investigates why some of them can be taken out of their original contexts and still retain their powerful connotations. 

For example, 鈥淪ay her name: X鈥� is often used for female victims of systemic violence regardless of their race, despite originating within the Black community in response to police brutality. Alternatively, 鈥淎ll Lives Matter鈥� conveys racism, because it is a distortion of 鈥淏lack Lives Matter.鈥� 

Through a multilingual corpus of multimodal artifacts (protest signs, short-form content, etc.), I explore how slogans are borrowed and co-opted from their original, intended communities. My study will contribute to the growing body of scholarship on multimodal constructions, and any findings on the similarities between the forms of constructions that are co-opted by antagonistic parties will be shared to help predict and moderate hate speech and signs. 

Elijah Lazar
Critically Deconstructing EU Institutional Discourse on Asylum: A Textual Approach 

My research critically deconstructs European Union institutional discourse surrounding asylum seeking and processes of migration. To accomplish this, I analyse EU documents, notably the 2024 EU pact on migration, employing a textual analysis approach to ascertain what ideology is hidden behind such texts. Further, I explore notions of entextualization, regarding the circularity of texts such as the 2024 EU pact on migration, to determine what are the real-world manifestations of such discourse in the linguistic practices of individual EU member states. 

Next, I analyse institutional discourse regarding the controversial practice of language as a determiner of origin in the asylum process, investigating the sociolinguistic ramifications of such procedures. Finally, I explore the use of new technologies in the bordering procedures of the EU, increasingly marked by securitization concerns. The aforementioned analysis is continually situated within the broader field of social theory, with language analysed as a fundamentally social phenomenon. 

Danica Reid
n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n syllables

My proposed project aims to determine the maximal syllable for n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n (Thompson River Salish), a Northern Interior Salish language spoken in South Central British Columbia along the Fraser Canyon and the Nicola and Thompson Rivers. The syllable is a unit of speech made up of groups of sounds that are organized around a segment called the nucleus. Cross-linguistically, the most common syllable shape is CV(C), but languages vary in how many consonants and which consonants are allowed to precede and follow the vocalic nucleus. The syllable template with the largest possible cluster of consonants before a nucleus (onset) or after a nucleus (coda) is known as the maximal syllable.

Salish languages make a particularly interesting test case when looking at syllable structure. Across the family, there is a large amount of morphological complexity and each added morpheme can add additional syllables or individual segments to a word that change syllabification. One side effect of this morphological complexity is the appearance of complex sequences of consonants such as the string of six consonants in the n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n word seytknmx 鈥�(Indigenous) people鈥�. Despite these complex sequences, most theories of syllabification for Salish languages argue for CCVCC or smaller maximal syllables with a maximum of two segments allowed in onset and coda positions. How segments outside of these maximally bi-consonantal clusters then pattern is uncertain.

For this project I will be working with three fluent speakers of n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n from the Lytton and Coldwater communities. Using targeted elicitation, I hope to determine the maximal syllable of n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n, how complex clusters are syllabified, and what repair strategies speakers use. The dissertation will present a theoretical account of syllable structure, but I will also be working with community input to create resources to help language teachers and learners who may be interested in understanding more about the syllable in n涩e蕯kepmxci虂n.