Research Areas

sociolinguistics (particularly language variation and metalinguistic analyses); language and gender; language attitudes and ideologies; queer linguistics/lavender linguistics; transnational feminism

Biography

I'm a fifth-year PhD student in the Romance Languages & Literatures program. I earned my BA in Comparative Literature from Barnard College in 2019 and completed a BA/MA at Columbia University in English & Comparative Literature in 2020, where I did most of my coursework not-so-secretly in the linguistics program.

My research thus far has looked at the emergence of neo-morphemes and neo-pronouns among non-binary French speakers in Montréal, language attitudes and ideologies in the linguistic landscape of Lisbon, Portugal, and treatment of l'écriture inclusive in the French press. I am also involved with the Corpus of New York City English (CoNYCE) project, looking at New Yorkers' metalinguistic attitudes towards the "New York accent." To learn more about my current projects, you can visit my website.

In my free time, I enjoy restoring vintage garments from the 1910s-1950s, embroidering wearable art, and befriending neighborhood cats.  My pronouns are she/her/hers. 

Selected Publications

Kaplan, Jennifer. “The Social Life of Non-binary French: How Non-Binary Francophones Linguistically Navigate Institutions.” Kris Aric Knisely & Eric Louis Russell (eds.), Redoing linguistic worlds: Unmaking gender binaries, remaking gender pluralities. Expected 2023. 

Kaplan, Jennifer. 2022. “Pluri-Grammars for Pluri-Genders: Competing Gender Systems in the Nominal Morphology of Non-binary French.” Languages 7(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040266  

Kaplan, Jennifer. 2022. Binary-Constrained Code-switching Among Non-binary French-English Bilinguals. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America (PLSA). https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5279