Gratton
Chantal Gratton

Chantal Gratton

(she/her)



I'm a doctoral candidate in Linguistics at Stanford University and I received my master's degree from York University.

I am interested in interactional sociophonetic questions, focusing on how speakers make use of linguistics variation to navigate social structures, forge interpersonal relationships, and express emotional affect. My work has examined:

  • non-binary transgender speakers' use of pitch to construct community and mark stances towards normative social ideologies
  • the semiotic link between prosody, the body, and forms of physical activity, evidenced by YouTube bodybuilders and yogis
  • the interactional potential for variation in vowel space size to mark common ground and construct closeness
  • how visceral affect complicates the relationship between vocalic variation and social meaning

Feel free to contact me at: gratton@stanford.edu

NWAV 48: Forests and Trees
10-12.10.2019
LSA 2019 Annual Meeting
03-06.01.2019
NWAV 47: Methods and Innovation
18-21.10.2018

Current Research

Affect and vowel space size

Affect plays an important role in the ebbs and flows of a variable's use throughout an interaction. Despite this, it remains under-theorized in sociolinguistic, though some recent proposals note the important of affect for linguistic variation (e.g., Eckert 2010; Podesva 2016). My current work examines affect in a way that provides insights into a thoroughly different type of social factor: 'visceral' feeling. To get at such social meanings, I examine variation in vowel space size using novel methods typically of research in affective sciences.

Humorous distractions!

Avoiding working on that pesky draft? Check out some of these great language and research procrastination tools guaranteed to provide you with the pick-me-up you need to keep going!