Hannah McCoy

Undergraduate Research Fellow

Class of: 2028 | Hometown: Elizabethton, TN
Major: Spanish | Minor: Linguistics

Research Interests: Sociolinguistics, L2 learning, L2 teaching, L2 acquisition, phonetics/phonology

I came to college with the goal of becoming a Spanish teacher. When, I took the General Linguistics course, I learned about languages in general and all of the various subfields within linguistics, which inspired me to pursue it as my minor.

I am most interested in sociolinguistics because it helps explain the “why” behind the way people speak. Language choices aren’t random; they’re shaped by a combination of internal factors that originate from the language system itself and external factors such as level of education, first or additional languages, and social class. Studying sociolinguistics lets me understand how these influences interact and why a person might choose one word or structure over another in different contexts.

Highlights

• I am a Class of 2028 Future LCF Teacher Scholar. Learn more about it here.
• In spring 2025, I completed an internship with Lutheran Services Carolinas, where I taught English as an additional language to refugees in the upstate of SC.