Hello! First things first: my CV can be found here. Papers can be found under the “Papers” tab! For media requests or legal consulting, please send me an email! I also make videos about linguistic concepts and current events for the public over on Tiktok!
I am a sociophonetician, specifically interested in how people use linguistic variation to perform and construct their social identities and to understand the identities of others through differences in their use of properties related to intonation and voice quality. More recently, I’ve been focused on sociolinguistic and phonetic challenges for speech technology, especially as they relate to the nature of variation and inequality. I also work on political speech and identity, with a special focus on political figures.
My ongoing research aims to address how speakers and listeners make social judgments based on acoustic properties, using quantitative methods, with a concentration on prosodic variables. Recently, this line of research has expanded to include analyses of how Socially Prescriptive Speech Technologies (SPSTs) fail to account for sociolinguistic variation and may be used against speakers. Over the last several years, I’ve taught Language and Society, Sociophonetics, and Prosody and Social Identity. I’ve also taught several semesters of Linguistic Discrimination, which is conducted in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Format.
News and Recent Appearances (for publications, see “Papers” tab).
-In September 2026, I’ll be at the Interspeech conference in Sydney, Australia, presenting a paper with Noah Khaloo and Sarah Creel (UCSD) entitled “Perceptual and Acoustic Correlates of Racial Identity in Text-to-Speech Voices”.
-In August 2026, I will be a keynote speaker at Sociolinguistics and AI at the University of Copenhagen.
-In May 2026, I was a speaker for the special session “Science Communication in Today’s Mediascape” at the Acoustical Society of America’s Meeting in Philadelphia.
On May 5th, 2026, my research was featured in the Berkeley News series, After Hours.
-In March 2026, I presented a talk at USC’s Center for Computational Language Science.
-In February 2026, I was a colloquium speaker for the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at Louisiana State University.
-In January 2026, I presented a paper at the LSA Annual Meeting with an excellent group of Berkeley graduate students. The paper is entitled “Identity and Personality in the Social Perception of Synthesized Voices: Perceptions of OpenAI’s text-to-speech technology”.
2025
-In November, I gave a presentation entitled “Socially Prescriptive Speech Technologies Rely on Biased AI Models of Idealized Speech” at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Convention, in Washington, D.C..
– In November, I was at NWAV 53 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. presenting a poster entitled ““Accent Translation” AI Fails to Generate “Standard English” Intonational Patterns.
-In October, I presented a colloquium talk in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon
-In August, it was my pleasure to speak with the amazing Anne Helen Petersen for an episode of the Culture Study podcast, all about American English dialects!
-I spent mid-July 2025 collecting data with graduate students Rhosean Asmah and Niko Schwatz-Acosta for the Berkeley ICBS-funded project “I’ma throw an R in any word that got a U in it: Memphis Rhotacization”.
Languages
-Mainstream U.S. English (Native)
-African American English (Native)
-Peruvian Spanish (Near-native)
-Italian (Beginner)
-Bolivian Quechua (Beginnner)
-Cairene Arabic (Beginner)
Education
-Ph.D., Linguistics, New York University (2016). Dissertation Title: Intonational Variation, Linguistic Style, and the Black/Biracial Experience. Supervisor: Renee Blake
-M.A., Linguistics, New York University, New York, NY (2014)
-B.A., Magna Cum Laude with Honors and Research Distinction in Linguistics; Linguistics, Spanish. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (2010)
Honors
-AHRC BRAID DOT. “Discriminating dialects: mitigating bias in Automatic Speech Recognition”. PI. With Drs. Jennifer Smith, Faith Chiu, and David Bamman. Award Amount: $300,000 (2026-2027)
-Lyle Spencer Research Award. “‘Don’t Take That Tone With Me’: Linguistic Variation and Disciplinary Action on African American Children in Schools”. PI. With Dr. Sabriya Fisher, Co-PI. Award Amount: $878,869 (2020-2025)
-Linguistic Society of America Early Career Award (2023)
-Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship-Pomona College (2016-2017)
-New York University Global Research Initiative Fellowship at NYU Washington, D.C. (2015)
-NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (2015-2016)
-National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2013-2016)
-Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute Fellowship (2013)
Links to Linguists I Like
–Vocal Fries Pod
–Lingthusiasm Pod
–Because Language Pod
Nicole Holliday, Ph.D 
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