Bio and Curriculum Vitae (he/they)
My research sits at the intersection of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and sociophonetics. I am deeply interested in how minoritized communities engage in linguistic resistance, repurpose institutional terminology, and carve out space across (digital) environments. My current projects include Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) of Slavic online communities, trans linguistics, and diaspora language contact.
Alongside research, frontline pedagogy is central to my work. I teach multi-level adult ESOL for immigrant, refugee, and asylee students in Anchorage, and I facilitate professional development workshops on asset-based and trauma-informed language education.
I am also an active visual artist, printmaker, poet, and zinester. Other labels that apply to me: 1.25-generation immigrant, first-generation American scholar, chronically online discourse analyst, proud cat parent to two highly opinionated research assistants (Shirley and Rubik), and habitual target language hoarder.
20-word bio: Alexei Batishchev is an MA student at UMass Boston researching identity construction and stance via (digital) discourse analysis and sociophonetics.
A quick guide for English speakers: "Alexei" sounds roughly like uh-lek-SAY. For my last name, the initial vowel is reduced (buh-), followed by a palatalized "t" and a long, soft "sh" sound (-teesh-shef).
I am a man of many names, and I also go by Alex or other Russian derivatives of the name, e.g. Alyosha or Lyosha ([ɐˈlʲɵʂə] + [ˈlʲɵʂə]). I do not go by Alexis, Alexie, or any form of the name that ends with an [i].
My last name has two palatal(-ized) sounds. That means the body of your tongue is raised against the hard palate. The [ɕ] sound, represented by "shch", is an alveolo-palatal fricative. Since it does not exist in English phonology, I am okay with it being pronounced like [ʃ]. Make sure you stress the second syllable.
My middle name, Luka, is pronounced [ɫʊˈka] with a dark L in the beginning and stress on the second syllable.
Americanized pronunciation of my name is /əˈlɛkseɪ ˈluːkə/. As for my last name, try your best, stress the 2nd syllable.Design and implement contextual language curricula for diverse adult learner networks, emphasizing communicative competence.
Guide learners through morphosyntactic structures, phonetic reduction patterns, and authentic conversational register.
Methodologies: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), Digital Ethnography, Auditory + Acoustic Phonetics, overall Mixed-Methods Research.
Tools & Programming: Python, Praat, GitHub, AntConc.