RESEARCH INTERESTS:

My research interests lie within the interdisciplinary fields of sociolinguistics, sociology of language and linguistic anthropology.

My main interests are language variation and change (especially, in settlement contexts). Grounded in the variationist sociolinguistic paradigm, I have been investigating dialect contact and koineisation, new dialect formation, dialect acquisition and dialect obsolescence (e.g., Japanese dialect contact and obsolescence in Palau and Peru).

I am also interested in contact linguistics (especially, in colonial and migrant/immigrant contexts); the linguistic consequences of language contact, such as language maintenance and shift (in postcolonial multilingual Palau and Nikkei Mexican communities in Mexico City), contact-induced borrowing (loanwords in Palauan), nativisation of newly emerging varieties of colonial languages (Palauan English) and ethnolect formation in multicultural immigrant communities (Nikkei Latino immigrant communities in Japan).

Other research interests include language development of bilingual children (e.g., returnee children of former expat families, children attending international schools), family language policy and creativity of bilingual language users.