I’m an Assistant Professor in Department of Linguistics at Brigham Young University specializing in sociophonetics and quantitative methods. In May 2020, I received my Ph.D in linguistics from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Georgia.
My primary area of research is on English in the western United States. My dissertation focused on English in Cowlitz County, Washington with an emphasis on uncovering variation in vowel formant trajectories. I am involved in several research projects on Utah English (vowels, consonants and intonation), including a long-term project analyzing a collection of 750 interviews with residents of Heber, Utah born before WWII.
Another strand of my research is focused on sociophonetic data analysis methods. Recently, I’ve run simulations on real and artificial sociophonetic data, uncovering some overlooked aspects of methods that may in fact be rather important, like order of operations and Pillai scores.
I publish under the more grown-up-sounding version of my name, Joseph A. Stanley, but anyone who has ever met me knows I go by Joey. I live in Spanish Fork with my wife (Kelly) and kids (Lena, Walter, and Douglas). I enjoy road running, breadmaking, succulent-raising, organ-playing, and object incorporation. I also have a blog on frequency statistics of hymns used in my church. A description of my idiolect can be found here and the languages I speak here.
What am I up to right now?
As of April 29, 2025, I am…
- 👨🏻🏫 Teaching African American English (as a Capstone course in the linguistics department).
🗒 Writing a second paper on how Utahns say mountain.
🗒 Figuring out which of the 12 or so papers I could submit this summer will be my priorities.
🎤 Almost done collecting some lab data on prelateral vowels in American English.
📼 Processing a few interviews from my Kohler Tapes collection and, with the help of someone much smarter than me, training a model to transcribe the rest for me.
👨🏻🏫 Ruminating about my tenure portfolio due in the fall.
📖 Trying to read more fiction. I’m currently rereading Mistborn: The Well of Ascension and am listening to Elantris.
🎹 Prepping some organ music to play in church.
🧶 Continuing to knit a second scarf (forest green this time), with a design of my own. We’ll see how it turns out.
