Jessica Vélez Avilés

Research Interests

I am an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I received my Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics and Language Science from Penn State University in 2024. My research sits at the intersection of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. I’m interested in how people make sense of what they hear, considering that real-life conversations occur in noisy, ambiguous, and variable contexts. I’m also curious about how people’s social backgrounds influence how they use and comprehend language. A key aspect of my work is exploring how literacy (i.e., being able to read and write) affects the way we process language. I combine lab and field methods to get a fuller picture of how linguistic and social factors work together in shaping language use and comprehension across different communities.Bilingualism, Spanish-English code-switching, Psycholinguistics, Language attitudes and ideologies, Applied linguistics