Home | About the Department | Contact Us

"Department of Spanish and Portuguese"

Jonathan Holmquist

Jonathan Holmquist
PhD, Princeton University
Associate Professor of Spanish

Research interests :

My research has been based largely on sociolinguistic field investigation in the region of Cantabria in northern Spain and in west-central Puerto Rico.  In both contexts, I have been interested in social change and linguistic variation as encountered in small communities in rural environments.  My interests include both the patterns of linguistic variation encountered in the Spanish of the communities studied and the social and linguistic factors associated with the patterns of language use.  I examine as well the ways the sociolinguistic experiences of these communities reflect the experiences of the larger societies in which they are found.  My analysis of linguistic variation considers a range of linguistic variables: phonological, morpho-syntactic, syntactic, and semantic, as well as broader questions of code selection and code mixing.  My methods typically involve a combination of qualitative and quantitative linguistic analysis accompanied by ethnographic description of the communities studied.

Publications representative of my research in Spain include the book, Language loyalty and linguistic variation: A Study in Spanish Cantabria , as well as the articles 'Social correlates of a linguistic variable: A Study in a Spanish village,' published in Language in Society , 'Style choice in a bidialectal village,' in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language , and 'Semantic features and gender dynamics in Cantabrian Spanish,' in Anthropological Linguistics .  Publications representative of my work in Puerto Rico include those listed under the heading of recent publications, below.  I am also currently working on a monographic representation of the work in Puerto Rico with the title Voices from the mountains: Coffee, culture and language in rural Puerto Rico .

I expect that my future research will allow me to extend my research to another geographical area, that of the "altiplano" in the region of Chimaltenango, Guatemala, where I have begun ethnographic observations.

Teaching interests:

I have been teaching for over 30 years and have taught students ranging from 3 and 4 year olds to doctoral students.  My goals at all ages and levels of study have been similar: to interact personally with my students and to challenge them in a way that will develop interest in subject matter as well as in producing quality work at the level appropriate for them.  At Temple I teach primarily in the areas of sociolinguistics and dialectology, descriptive linguistics for language learning and teaching, and Spanish language and grammar.  My advanced undergraduate and graduate courses provide for detailed and technical language study, frequently in combination with an examination of social dimensions and context of language use.  My dissertation students have carried out scholarly students in the areas of Spanish sociolinguistics, language in contact, and language learning.

Most recent publications and presentations:

Books :
Holmquist, Jonathan; Lorenzino, Augusto; and Sayahi, Lotfi. Selected proceedings of the Third Workshop in Spanish Sociolinguistics (Temple University, 2006).  New York: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 2007.

Articles :
Holmquist, Jonathan.  Gender in context: Features and factors in men's and women's speech in rural Puerto Rico.  In Maurice Westmoreland and Juan Tomas Testa (eds.) Selected proceedins of the Fourth Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (SUNY Albany , 2007).  New York: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.  Forthcoming 2008.

_____.   Social stratification in women's speech in rural Puerto Rico: A study of five    phonological features.  In Lotfi Sayahi (ed.) Selected proceedings of the Second Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (SUNY Albany, 2004).  New York: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.  109-119. 2005.

_____.  Coffee farmers, social integration and five phonological features: Regional socio-dialectology in west-central Puerto Rico.  In Lotfi Sayahi (ed.) Selected proceedings of the First Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (SUNY Albany, 2002).  New York: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.  70-76.  2003.

______.  Variación vocálica en el habla masculina de Castañer, PR.  Cuaderno internacional de estudios hispánicos y lingüística 1: 96-103.  2001.

 

Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Anderson Hall 4th Floor 1114 West Berks Street Philadelphia, PA 19122-6090
Phone: (215) 204-8285 Fax: (215) 204-3731
http://www.temple.edu/spanpor/