​Eva-María Suárez Büdenbender

My main research interests lie in the areas of dialectal contact, language attitudes, and perceptions. This means that I am interested in how people think about different dialects or accents and how this correlates to who the speakers of those dialects/accents are seen in the society at large. Over the years I have mostly worked with communities in the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) and in San Juan, Puerto Rico, investigating attitudes towards Dominican and Puerto Rican Spanish by speakers of both groups. Of special interest to me is the status of Dominican Spanish in the Puerto Rican Diaspora.

       My publications examine perceptions of dialects of the Caribbean, by the speakers within and outside of that geographic and dialectal region. My research methods include largely sociolinguistic/ethnographic interviews based on questionnaires, data coding, data analysis (qualitative a quantitative). The studies examine and draw from phonetic/phonological, semantic and syntactic differences between language varieties. In these projects I have worked on my own as well as in collaboration with colleagues. The volume entitled "Topics in Spanish Linguistic Perceptions" and the special edited volume from Caribbean Studies ("The Dominican Diaspora: From Quisqueya to Puerto Rico and beyond") are two co-edited volumes of mine with current research in the field. Simply click to examine the publications more closely. 

​