About me
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics & TESOL at the University of Texas at Arlington. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University in 2024, where I was advised by Cynthia Clopper and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler.
My research program spans sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, phonetics, and phonology. I specialize in experimental approaches to language variation and change in American English dialects. My work primarily focuses on understanding how listeners’ experiences with language variation, especially dialect-specific phonological structures like allophony and chain shifts, impact their cognitive representations of speech sounds. I employ a variety of psycholinguistic research methodologies to this end, including eye-tracking, priming, and lexical decision. These methodologies have a great deal to offer to sociolinguists interested in studying empirically and theoretically complex phenomena like sound change and dialect contact, and in my research, I seek to unite sociolinguistic questions with experimental methodologies from the psycholinguistic tradition.
I have worked on the origins of pre-voiceless diphthong raising (“American raising”) in several U.S. cities using production data, including New Orleans (LA) and Columbus (OH), and of /aw/ retraction in Raleigh (NC), a city where the Southern Vowel Shift is receding.
I previously completed an M.A. in English (Linguistics) at North Carolina State University in 2019, where I worked with Robin Dodsworth, Jeff Mielke, and Walt Wolfram. I completed a B.A. in Linguistics and a B.A. in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017, where I worked with John Baugh.
Recent refereed publications (PDFs of all publications are linked in my CV.)
Bissell, M. (under review). The role of dialect exposure in the processing of allophonic variation: Evidence from eye-tracking. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.
Hauser, I., Bissell, M., & Baese-Berk, M. M. (under review). Common metrics find phantom convergence in laboratory shadowing. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.
Hauser, I., Baese-Berk, M. M., & Bissell, M. (under revision). Phonological contrast and the target of phonetic imitation in English sibilants. Journal of Phonetics.
Bissell, M. (2026). Effects of exposure on perceptual evaluations of dialect-specific allophonic variation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 159(2): 1613-1629. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0042426.
Bissell, M., & Clopper, C. G. (2025). The effect of listener dialect experience on perceptual adaptation to and generalization of a novel vowel shift. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 16(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/labphon.11588.
Bissell, M., Álvarez-Retamales, J., Champagne, M., Hatcher, J., Omar, S., & Wolfram, W. (2024). Linguistic literacy and advocacy in action: Case studies in community engagement. In A. H. Charity Hudley, M. Bucholtz, & C. Mallinson, Oxford Collection on Inclusion in Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Shport, I., Bissell, M., Berkson, K., & Carmichael, K. (2023). Regional and individual variation in acoustic targets of /ai/ and /au/ in American English. Proceedings of the International Conference of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
Bissell, M. (2023). Placing /aw/ retraction in the retreat from the Southern Vowel Shift in Raleigh, North Carolina. Journal of English Linguistics, 55(1): 66-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242221144474.
Current projects
Cross-linguistic effects on lexical processing: We are examining how listeners’ experiences with languages other than English affect how they process words with different English allophones. We are currently preparing a manuscript from this project for submission to Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. This project is an ongoing collaboration with UT Arlington graduate student Shawn Tang.
Geographic mobility and lexical processing: We are studying how listeners’ experiences with dialect variation affect how they process words. We are analyzing mono-dialectals vs. multi-dialectals as well as effects of exposure to specific dialectal variants (e.g., /ai/ monophthongization). We have employed various psycholinguistic methods, including priming and eye-tracking. We are currently preparing manuscripts from this project for submission to Journal of Phonetics and Glossa: Psycholinguistics. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Cynthia Clopper at Ohio State, Abby Walker at Virginia Tech, Ohio State graduate students (Kyler Laycock, Kevin Lilley), and Ohio State undergraduate students (Larisa Bryan, Declan Chandler-Holtz).
Me with my collaborators Cynthia Clopper and Kyler Laycock at the Acoustical Society of America in Philadelphia, PA in May 2026.
Hyperarticulation of dialect variants: We are exploring clear speech as a novel approach to addressing the actuation problem, aiming to figure out whether phonological control of new variants could originate in clear speech registers. We are currently revising a proposal to submit to the National Science Foundation, which was previously submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Build & Broaden Program and ranked high competitive. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Ivy Hauser at UT Arlington.
Pre-voiceless diphthong raising in several U.S. cities: We are investigating the phonetic origin, diachronic implementation, and phonologization of pre-voiceless /ai/ and /au/ raising among American English speakers in Indiana, Ohio, and Louisiana. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Katie Carmichael at Virginia Tech, Kelly Berkson and Stuart Davis at Indiana University, and Irina Shport at Louisiana State University.
Me with my collaborators Kelly Berkson and Monica Nesbitt at the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA in May 2025.