Spanish & Portuguese
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., California State University
I teach linguistics as a set of tools for seeing what is usually taken for granted: how language works, how it circulates in public, and how it shapes access to information and belonging. In my courses, students don’t just learn terminology and theory; they collect evidence, test claims, and explain patterns in language they encounter every day—on city streets, online, and across the communities they move through. To support this work, I design courses around experiential and research-based learning, so that students engage in academic inquiry while developing a deeper understanding of their own language practices and cultural contexts, seeing their communities not only as objects of study but as sources of knowledge, and analysis grows out of practice rather than abstraction.
A core component of this approach appears in courses that engage students in community embedded linguistic analysis. For example, in Spanish in the Linguistic Landscape: Implications for Linguistic and Sociocultural Study, a course I developed as a Berkeley Language Center fellow, students document the displayed language present in Bay Area neighborhoods— storefronts, street signs, flyers, graffiti, and other everyday texts. Through this work, they build shared corpora that become the basis for systematic analysis. They use that data to examine community patterns of language use and access in their own communities. Coursework is structured to guide students from observation to interpretation: they learn how to document data systematically, identify recurring patterns, and support claims using evidence they have collected themselves. As final projects, students present their analyses in public-facing formats such as maps and websites, which encourages them to explain patterns clearly and responsibly rather than writing only for an instructor.
I use a similar approach in courses that focus on spoken language and variation. In Spanish Dialectology and Sociolinguistic Variation and Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, students analyze recorded speech and media examples to examine how accents and dialect features pattern across regions and social contexts. Students work with real speech data and are asked to justify what they hear and observe. Music, social media clips, and popular television provide shared points of reference, but the analytical work remains central: students learn to describe linguistic features precisely, maintaining analytic rigor while also reflecting critically on how accents, dialects, and language choices are represented and evaluated, as well as how language, identity, and power circulate in everyday contexts.
Mentorship often begins in course-work and continues through independent study, allowing students to deepen their engagement over time and take increasing ownership of their work.
-Jhonni Carr
One course that shaped my teaching in lasting ways was Spanish Morphology and Syntax, which I redesigned when instruction moved online in the middle of the semester during the pandemic. I adapted the final project so that students could apply course concepts while responding to immediate language needs in their communities. As a class, we partnered with local nonprofit organizations such as Clinic by the Bay, Somos Familia, and the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, and students worked in small groups to translate public-facing materials related to COVID safety guidelines, food security, and social services, including flyers addressing topics such as COVID-19 prevention and support resources for individuals experiencing domestic abuse. I paired each group with Spanish-speaking contacts who reviewed drafts and discussed wording choices to improve clarity and accuracy. In one case, a student who speaks Mixtec, an Indigenous language of Mexico, created a translation for migrant communities on California’s Central Coast, where information about health guidelines, financial assistance, and workers’ rights had been limited. The student produced an audio version of the translation, which was shared on social media and later broadcast on Radio Indígena 94.1, a station serving Indigenous and immigrant audiences. Across projects, students documented their translation choices in short analytic reflections, linking them to morphosyntactic patterns we had studied in the course. This redesign preserved the analytical focus of the class while asking students to think carefully about audience, register, and precision.
For some students, this kind of sustained analytic work does not end with a single course. My mentoring grows directly out of these teaching practices. Through independent study and longer term projects, students move beyond course-based analysis to learn how linguistic questions are developed, how evidence is selected and organized, and how observations become defensible claims. I work closely with students as they refine research questions, collect and analyze data, and articulate findings. Mentorship often begins in coursework and continues through independent study, allowing students to deepen their engagement over time and take increasing ownership of their work. Several students later used final research papers from these courses as writing samples in successful graduate school applications, carrying this preparation forward into graduate study and other professional paths, including after they graduate.
Across my teaching, I return to the same set of practices: asking students to work with real language, to justify what they claim with evidence, and to reflect on how linguistic choices matter in concrete settings. I view teaching as an ongoing practice of reflection and adaptation— one that connects linguistic analysis to the environments students inhabit. I design classes where students learn linguistics by doing it—collecting data, testing ideas, and explaining patterns they observe. These commitments shape how I design courses, revise assignments, and mentor students, and they continue to guide how I approach new teaching contexts. My goal is not to arrive at a finished model of teaching, but to remain attentive to how students learn best when analysis is rooted in experience and when linguistic inquiry feels both applicable and accessible.