Dr. Stephen Fafulas is Associate Professor of Modern Languages at University of Mississippi, where he teaches Spanish and Linguistics, conducts research through the SoCIOLing Lab, and leads the SEC Spanish Consortium.
Research Interests
Dr. Fafulas incorporates current theories and methodologies in Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition to examine morpho-syntactic and phonetic variation in native, learner, and contact varieties of language. He employs quantitative methods to uncover the social, linguistic, and cognitive factors that shape languages at the individual and societal level.
Dr. Fafulas has experience conducting linguistic fieldwork with various speech communities throughout the Americas and Europe, and his investigations have explored language shift and bilingualism in distinct settings. This work analyzes the ethnolinguistic vitality of minority languages in the Amazon (Bora, Yagua and Ocaina) as well as in the USA (Spanish). His studies have been funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr. Fafulas is dedicated to cross-disciplinary scholarship that integrates community stakeholders in the project design. To achieve this, he co-founded the Study of Communities, Involvement & Outreach and Linguistics (SoCIOLing) Lab, through which he collaborates with scholars, trains undergraduate and graduate students, and raises awareness of the cultural and linguistic diversity across bilingual zones of the Americas.
Biography
Dr. Stephen Fafulas is Associate Professor at the University of Mississippi where he teaches courses on Spanish language, culture and linguistics. He holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from Indiana University with a specialization in the intersection of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics.
Since 2013, he is director of the Study of Communities, Involvement & Outreach and Linguistics Lab (https://sociolinglab.org) through which he mentors students and leads a number of research initiatives with bilingual communities globally. Dr. Fafulas’s projects have been funded by organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His publications have been featured in journals such as Linguistics Vanguard and Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics. He is sole editor of “Amazonian Spanish: Language Contact and Evolution,” published with John Benjamins in 2020, which documents emerging Spanish-speaking populations in the Amazon.
Dr. Fafulas is co-founder of the SEC Spanish Consortium (https://secspanish.org/), which promotes cross-disciplinary scholarship and cross-institutional collaborations aimed at documenting diversity among Latinx communities in the U.S. South. In 2022, Dr. Fafulas was awarded a Fulbright to Spain, where he gave seminars at Universidad de Murcia and conducted research with the Ecuadorian community living there. Dr. Fafulas is one of the University’s inaugural Faculty Laureates (https://olemiss.edu/news/2024/04/fafulas-fac-laureate/index.html), a program that will support him in documenting Latinx populations in the U.S. South, through oral histories, student mentoring, and bilingual education initiatives.
Publications
Other Publications
- Fafulas, S. (2021).“Variation of the simple present and present progressive: Peruvian Spanish, ‘Pear Story,’ and language contact, oh my!” In M. Díaz-Campos, M. (Ed.), The Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish (pp. 328–344). Routledge.
- Fafulas, S., Henriksen, N., & O’Rourke, E. (2022). “Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: Acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals.” Linguistics Vanguard. 8(5) pp. 557–568.
- Geeslin, K., & Fafulas, S. (2022). “Linguistic variation and second language Spanish: A study of progressive and habitual marking by English-speaking learners.” In Bayley, R., Preston, D., and Li, X. (Eds.), Variation in Second and Heritage Languages: Crosslinguistic perspectives (pp. 159–198). John Benjamins.
- Fafulas, S., Hearn, S., & Fionda, M. (2023). “Short-term Study Abroad and Dialect Acquisition: An Analysis of the Personal Pronoun Ustedes with Verb-2pl and 2pl-Indirect Object Pronoun Constructions by L2 Learners of Spanish in Andalucía.” In Zahler, S., Long, A., & Linford, B. (Eds.), Study Abroad and the Second Language Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation in Spanish (pp. 204–228). John Benjamins.
Courses Taught
- LING 702 Linguistic Fieldwork and Data Analysis
- SPAN 672 Research and Practice in Classroom Second Language Acquisition
- LIN 605 Seminar in Syntax
- SPAN 573 Spanish Morphology and Syntax
- SPAN 572 Spanish Phonetics and Phonology
Education
Ph.D. Spanish, Indiana University-Bloomington (2013)
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OXFORD, Miss. – The Magnolia State has become a new destination for Latino communities, but a University of Mississippi professor said there's more work needed to bridge the gap between native Spanish speakers and other Mississippians.
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Honors & Awards