I am a linguist who uses qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Depending on what hat I’m wearing, I could be more narrowly described as a sociocultural linguist, computational linguist, or linguistic anthropologist. Regardless, I bring a discourse-functional, sociocultural theoretical framework to the study of languages and the people who speak them. Broadly speaking, my academic research areas are language, gender, and sexuality, language in media, and language and cognition. I have also contributed to some language documentation projects.
EurekAlert! featured my research on bisexuality and /s/ production in their press release about the Linguistic Society of America’s 2021 Annual Meeting.
The picture to the left is a shot I took during a documentation field trip to Miyakojima, Japan with my collaborators Julia Fine and Karen Tsai.
Publications
Willis, Chloe. 2024. Bisexuality in Experimental Sociophonetics: Ideologies and Implications. Journal of Language and Sexuality 13(1): 24-50. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.00030.wil
Willis, Chloe. 2023. Sôshokukei kara asuparabêkon made (‘From herbivores to bacon-wrapped asparagus’): Binary gender taxonomies and neoliberal self-making in modern Japan. Gender and Language 17(3): 223-249. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.20946
Willis, Chloe and Chadi Ben Youssef. 2023. Random bisexual forests: Intersections between gender, sexuality, and race in /s/ production. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8(1): 5004. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5504
Willis, Chloe. 2021. Bisexuality and /s/ production. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 6(1): 69-81. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v6i1.4942
Babel Molly, Grant McGuire, and Chloe Willis. 2021. The Role of Voice Evaluation in Voice Recall. In: Weiss B., Trouvain J., Barkat-Defradas M., Ohala J.J. (eds) Voice Attractiveness. Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6627-1_6
Manuscripts in Preparation
Zimman, Lal, Kristian Ali, Cedar Brown, Julien De Jesus, Solaire Denaud, Brooke English, Jazmine Exford, Crystal Gong, Dozandri C. Mendoza, deandre miles-hercules, Jordan Tudisco & Chloe Willis. Under review. Trans linguistics from theory to praxis: Disciplinary moves toward intersectional trans inclusion, support, and well-being. Submitted as a part of a special issue on Trans Linguistics.
Willis, Chloe. Under review. Music, Language, and Intertextuality in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Submitted as a part of a special issue on musicolinguistics.
Willis, Chloe & Simon Todd. In progress. #BiTwitter: A keyness analysis of bisexual discourses on Twitter.
Willis, Chloe & Julia Fine. In progress. Bi culture (TM) is: Enregistering bisexual personae on Tumblr.
Dissertation & Theses
Willis, Chloe Marie. 2023. The Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Bisexuality in Language and Sexuality Research. [Dissertation.] CA: University of California Santa Barbara. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dx2p71z
Willis, Chloe Marie. 2020. Bisexuality and /s/ production. [Master’s Thesis.] CA: University of California Santa Barbara. ProQuest ID: Willis_ucsb_0035N_14688. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m59s6zm1. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3tw3b1rq
Willis, Chloe Marie. 2013. Speaker Gender and the Perception of Grammatical Gender. [Undergraduate Thesis.] CA: University of California Santa Cruz. Manuscript available upon request.
Upcoming Conference Talks
TBD
Invited Talks & Lectures
“Happy, #horny, valid: A keyness analysis of bisexual discourses on Twitter” [Invited talk.] With Simon Todd. July 12, 2023. UC Santa Barbara Lunch & Learn. Santa Barbara, CA.
“Happy, #horny, and valid: A keyness analysis of bisexual discourses on Twitter” [Doctoral colloquium.] With Simon Todd. May 18, 2023. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA. Twitter announcement here.
“Phonetics: Part 2” [Guest lecture.] LING 20: Introduction to Languages and Linguistics (Instructor of Record: Adrienne Tsikewa, M.A.). February 1, 2023. University of California, Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara, CA.
“Phonetics: Part 1” [Guest lecture.] LING 20: Introduction to Languages and Linguistics (Instructor of Record: Adrienne Tsikewa, M.A.). January 30, 2023. University of California, Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara, CA.
“Sociophonetics” [Guest lecture.] LING 106: Introduction to Phonetics (Instructor of Record: Chun-Jan Young, M.A.). November 22, 2022. University of California, Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara, CA. (Cancelled)
“The Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Bisexuality in Language and Sexuality Research” [Invited talk.] UC Santa Barbara Linguistics Open House. January 13, 2022. Santa Barbara, CA.
“The Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Bisexuality in Language and Sexuality Research” [Invited talk.] UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Forum (Phorum). October 29, 2021. Berkeley, CA.
“Bisexuality in Experimental Sociophonetics: Ideologies & Implications” [Distinguished alumni lecture.] UC Santa Cruz Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC). May 28, 2021. Santa Cruz, CA.
“Bisexuality & /s/ production” [Guest lecture.] LING 294: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (Instructor of Record: Jessica Love-Nichols, PhD). February 11, 2021. Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN.
“Bisexuality and the voice” [Distinguished alumni lecture.] UC Santa Cruz Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC) 2020. Santa Cruz, CA. (Cancelled)
“Hetero- and homonormativity” [Guest lecture.] LING 132: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (Instructor of Record: Lal Zimman, PhD). February 15, 2019. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA.
Co-facilitated a workshop on a Japanese to English translation of an excerpt from Haruki Murakami’s The Year of Spaghetti. Guest lecture.] C LIT 170: The Art of Literary Translation (Instructor of Record: Katie Lateef-Jan, PhD). December 2, 2019. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA.
Previous Conference Talks
#Bi Twitter: A keyness analysis of bisexual discourses on Twitter. With Simon Todd. January 4-7, 2023. The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. New York, New York.
“Happy, #horny, and valid: A keyness analysis of bisexual discourses on Twitter”. With Simon Todd. July 9, 2023. The 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Toronto, Canada. https://openreview.net/pdf?id=kBos_fIPHJD
“Random bisexual forests: Gender, sexuality & race in /s/ production. With Chadi Ben Youssef. Linguistic Society of America 97th Annual Meeting. January 7, 2023. Denver, CO.
“Sôshokukara asuparabêkon made! ‘From herbivores to bacon-wrapped asparagus!’: Binary gender taxonomies and neoliberal self-making in modern Japan” Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference 28. May 24, 2022. Catania, Italy. (remote) http://www.lavlang28.unict.it/.
“Bi culture is…: Enregistering bisexuality in online discourse”. With Julia Fine. Spring Conference 2022, Society for Linguistic Anthropology. April 7, 2022. Boulder, CO. http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/meetings/2020-spring-conference-society-linguistic-anthropology/.
NWAV 49 Workshop: Scholarly Communication in Pursuit of Publication Justice. With Anne Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, Aris Clemons, Carlos Nash, Kendra Calhoun, Jamaal Muwwakkil, and deandre miles-hercules. October 19, 2021. Austin, TX. (remote)
“Bisexuality and /s/ production.” Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference 27. May 23, 2021. San Francisco, CA.
“Bisexuality and /s/ production.” Linguistic Society of America Virtual Annual Meeting 95: Sociophonetics, January 9, 2021. (remote)
“Music and Intertextuality in the Japanese Video Game Series The Legend of Zelda.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting: Musicolinguistics in a Multimodal World. November 23, 2019. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
“Dandan koe ga hikuku natte kite (‘Little by little (your) voice becomes lower’): Gender performance and performativity in Takarazuka.” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. November 17, 2018. San Jose, CA.
“Phonetic Correlates of Perceived Bisexuality in California English.” Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference 25. April 20, 2018. Providence, RI.
Chloe Willis 