Suzanne Evans Wagner, assistant professor of linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages. Photo by G.L. Kohuth.

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Growing up near London’s East End, assistant professor Suzanne Evans Wagner wondered why some of her friends had a Cockney accent and she didn’t. Wagner’s fascination with speech and linguistics evolved into education and a career.

As a faculty member of the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, Wagner’s research is devoted to deconstructing people’s speech patterns. Wagner conducts informal interviews with her subjects, analyzing variations in language over time.

“I ask them lots of questions about themselves, and I try to get them to relax so that they no longer think about what they’re saying and how they’re saying it,” Wagner said. “This particular kind of very unselfconscious speech is a great window into how their language is structured.”

The process can be laborious, but rewarding. Sometimes hours and hours of data are required just to analyze a particular vowel.

“There are Ph.D.s in my field who have written their dissertations on the vowel, ‘ah,’” Wagner said.