I’m Ian Michalski.

I’m an applied linguist with special expertise in second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. I primarily work with Spanish and English language data.

I completed my Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics at Indiana University. I am now an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Roanoke College where I teach courses in Spanish and Hispanic Linguistics.

When I took my first Spanish class, as a sixth grader in upstate New York, I developed a visceral interest in the Spanish language. I am blessed to have a “calling”—I feel strongly about language as the most fundamental element of how humans forge meaningful connections and communicate with one another.

I look at linguistics through a global lens.  I majored in World Languages and Political Science at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. I earned my master’s in Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech.  I had the privilege of studying at Indiana University, where I earned my master’s degree in Hispanic Linguistics and my Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics.  In 2021, I defended my dissertation, “The Sociolinguistic Perception of Stylistic Variation in A Second Language: Attitudes toward four variable structures of Spanish.”

I have presented my research at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, the Linguistic Association of the Southwest Annual Meeting, and the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. I have a book chapter titled “L2 Sociolinguistic Perception of Stylistic Variation: Attitudes toward two variable linguistic features of Spanish” featuring innovative empirical work stemming from my dissertation that was published in a volume titled Innovative Approaches to Research in Hispanic Linguistics: Diachronic, Regional and Learner Profile Variation (John Benjamins). My article, “Morphological case and argument structure variation with hybrid Spanish-Yucatec Maya verbs: ‘hacer + V” in monolingual Yucatán Spanish” was published by the Berkeley Linguistics Society.  A recent collaboration on this same topic is featured in a paper that was published by Research in Corpus Linguistics.

My most recent work as focused on advancing our understanding of L2 sociolinguistic perception by incorporating other measures such as language and first language sociolinguistic awareness, rather than comparisons with native speakers. This work is featured in a forthcoming chapter in the volume, Research at the Intersection of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics: Studies in honor of Kimberly L. Geeslin.

I live in Roanoke, VA with my husband Alejandro.  When I’m not teaching, researching, or writing, I’m cooking Lebanese/Yucatecan food, fly fishing, playing volleyball, doing crossfit, or planning my next trip.