Agrigento (Sicily)

gabriella licata

/ gabriˈɛl:a liˈkata /

she ~ ella ~ lei ~ lê

glicata (at) ucr (dot) edu

Photo cred to sis

I am a linguist and mentor at UC Riverside, where I am a Postdoctoral Scholar in Spanish Critical Sociolinguistics and Language Education at the LatCrit Sociocultural Linguistics Lab in the Latino and Latin American Research and Studies Center. I received my PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UC Berkeley, where I completed a dissertation entitled, Investigating Deficit Perspectives and Raciolinguistic Ideologies Through Language Attitude Study under the advising of Dr. Justin Davidson, wherein I use a raciolinguistic perspective to examine how listening subjects use their perceptions of race, gender, and alleged 'deficits' to form language attitudes.  I use both qualitative and experimental approaches to reveal how individuals' and groups' perception and use of language are ideologically charged.


I am also a volunteer teacher and research mentor at Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin Prison, where Student Researchers and I are investigating the sociolinguistic labor of incarcerated people (CPHS Protocol #2022-220). In this project, we use participatory action research to include the experts of the prison system (i.e., incarcerated people) in the research project. Our ultimate goals are to provide incarcerated students with new opportunities and bring experiences from inside the prison to the forefront of [socio]linguistic research. Read more about some of our students and people inside the prison here.