Brandon J. Martínez

Education

• PhD Hispanic Linguistics (In Progress). University of Arizona.

• MA Linguistics. University of New Mexico. 2021.

• BA Linguistics & Languages. University of New Mexico. 2017.

About Me

I was born and raised in Grants, New Mexico, a small mining & ranching community nestled between Mt. Taylor, the malpaís lava flows, and the Zuni Mountains. La Nueva México, like other parts of Aztlán, has a rich history of cultural interaction, with long-standing inhabitance by Native American tribes, and later waves of colonization and occupation by hispanos and Anglo-Americans. 

My love for language was sparked by a trip to Brazil in 2013, and since then I have studied or conducted research on a number of languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and a handful of others. The process of learning languages has provided me with many amazing opportunities in my life, including the chance to travel and explore different places, cultures, and peoples. Importantly, however, the process of reclaiming Spanish as my heritage language has helped me develop my personal identity as a US Latino, to expand my understanding of our mestizo heritage (mixed-race European + Indigenous), and to better appreciate the nuevomexicano culture that I grew up in.

As of Fall 2024, I am pursuing a PhD in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Arizona, with a minor in Linguistic Anthropology. I am specifically interested in the sociocultural linguistic study of Latinos in the United States, and for my doctoral research I plan to explore the effects which social networks and socioeconomic changes have on language shift in New Mexico. Alongside my own research endeavors, I also teach Spanish for heritage speakers at the UofA, and am a research assistant for the NEH-funded project Bilingual Voices in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.