My name is Olivia Mignone [oʊ.ˈlɪ.vi.ə mɪn.’joʊn] and I am a  PhD Candidate in Linguistics at The Graduate Center, CUNY. My advisor is Dr. Cecelia Cutler. I am also a former graduate teaching fellow at Lehman College where I taught undergraduate Linguistics courses for three years. I received my MA in Linguistics from Stony Brook University in 2017 with Dr. Lori Repetti as my advisor.

My research interests include linguistic landscapes, language access, Ainu phonology, Japanese phonology, and endangered language documentation and revitalization.

My dissertation research focuses on the visibility of the Tibetan language in Jackson Heights, New York City. My work critiques the reputation of Jackson Heights as a superdiverse, multilingual place, noting that Himalayan languages are primarily visible in bottom-up contexts like small business signs, but absent from top-down contexts like banks or larger businesses. This research aims to explore how this limited diversity affects Tibetan speakers and addresses questions about who benefits from the area’s diversity. It also engages with neoliberal discourses of diversity, examining how they may commodify languages while speakers face pressure to shift to English. With this dissertation, I seek to challenge simplistic narratives of multiculturalism and shed light on the complex dynamics of linguistic diversity in urban spaces.

My past phonological research involved an investigation of glottal stop epenthesis in Ainu, specifically arguing that glottal stop epenthesis is a purely phonological phenomenon as compared to glide insertion, the latter being sensitive to prosodic word boundaries.

Email: omignone@gradcenter.cuny.edu

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