Brandon J. Martínez

Personal Background

I was born and raised in Grants, New Mexico, a small mining & ranching town located in Cíbola County, nestled between Mt. Taylor, the malpaís lava flows, and the Zuni Mountains. Like most of New Mexico, Cíbola has a rich history of cultural interaction, with long-standing inhabitance by several Native American tribes and later waves of colonization and occupation by hispanos and Anglo-Americans. Although not transparent to me when I was younger, as an adult, having grown up a nuevomexicano has caused me to develop a deep respect and appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Furthermore, reclaiming Spanish as my heritage tongue has helped to develop my identity as a US Latino, and to pride myself on both my mestizo and Anglo-American roots.

Academic Background

I hold a BA in Linguistics & Languages (Spanish, Mandarin) and an MA in Linguistics, both from the University of New Mexico. During my time at UNM, my research focused heavily on usage-based theory, sociolinguistics, and Traditional New Mexican Spanish, culminating in an MA thesis relating to /s/ reduction in TNMS as spoken in Cíbola County. My time at UNM also allowed me the opportunity to teach several introductory-level Spanish courses, and to study abroad in both Ecuador and China.

As a linguist, my theoretical orientation is grounded in usage-based, variationist sociolinguistics, and translanguaging theories. Some specific research interests include sociophonetics, linguistic identity, and bi/multilingualism, with a geographic focus on the US Borderlands.

As of Fall 2022, I am currently attending the University of Arizona as a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics. My current projects include a variationist analysis of discourse-pragmatic variation in Southern Arizona Spanish, as well as an exploration of the use of parody to index a Chicano identity. In the near future, my intention is to collect a sociolinguistic corpus of Cíbola Spanish, to be used to further scholarship of the region.

Curriculum Vitae