Lewis Esposito
Lewis's research examines the social forces that drive patterns of linguistic variation. He is particularly interested in how style relates to community-level patterns of variation and change, primarily, although not exclusively, at the level of sound. He is also interested in the roles of gender and sexuality in variation, as well as the connections among socio-indexical, pragmatic, and semantic meaning. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 2016 with a BA in Linguistics & Languages, and he is currently finishing up his PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University.

Brandon Waldon
My research examines how context, linguistic structure, and social cognition jointly enable linguistic communication. I’m currently wrapping up the final year of my PhD in linguistics at Stanford, where I wrote a dissertation on the interpretation of epistemic modals (e.g., It’s probably raining outside; It might be raining outside). Beyond modals, I’ve worked on a variety of topics in semantics and pragmatics, including linguistic vagueness/imprecision, referring expression production, and conversational implicature.

I’m also interested in using linguistic theory and methods to help lawyers, judges, and the public navigate hard problems of legal textual analysis. Starting in April, I’ll spend a year as a postdoc at Georgetown, with a focus on computational linguistics and its applications to legal interpretation.

Following the postdoc, I’ll be coming to USC! I am so excited to start working with students and faculty in the Linguistics Program and the Philosophy Department.