Rosti Vana

Rosti Vana is an Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics. He received his PhD in Spanish Linguistics from Arizona State University. Rosti Vana specializes in applied linguistics, particularly focusing his work on the intersection of sociolinguistics and heritage language pedagogy in classroom contexts and beyond. His research agenda focuses on sociolinguistic issues related to spoken language varieties in the mixed L2-HL classes. As there is a scarcity of empirical knowledge regarding the incorporation of sociolinguistic principles and pedagogical practices in mixed second/heritage courses, he looks at the study of language attitudes between US Spanish varieties and second language learner varieties in order to find pedagogical best practices that serve both types of learners and potentially combat linguistic discrimination.

Rosti Vana is currently working a two manuscripts that analyze the conscious and unconscious biases both types of students hold toward Spanish spoken varieties in advanced mixed classes. As such, he intends to demonstrate the importance of incorporating sociolinguistic principles that transcend micro-level discourses, and rather consider macro-level topics in order to address the linguistic hierarchies that exist in such educational and social contexts. In addition, Rosti Vana is interested in critical/multimodal discourse analysis and Spanish in the Media. He has published with a colleague a manuscript on dialect stylization and language ideologies on a broadcasted prank call and just submitted a follow-up publication with two other colleagues on mediatization and code-switching in Netflix’s Elite. He is also committed to quantitative sociolinguistic research outside the classroom contexts to bring forth a deeper understanding of US Spanish.

He joined Sam Houston State University in August 2021 and has taught extensively in both in-person, hybrid, and online formats. He teaches Elementary and Intermediate Spanish, Spanish Linguistics and Spanish for the Professions (i.e., Spanish for Criminal Justice) as well as graduate seminars.

Selected Publications

Loza, S., Vana. R., & Padilla, L.(accepted). What’s so elite?: A critical discourse analysis of mediatized code-switching in the Netflix series Elite. In. A. Sánchez-Muñoz & J. Retis (Eds.) Communicative Spaces in Bilingual Contexts: Discourses, Synergies and Counterflows in Spanish and English. Routledge.

Cerrón-Palomino, A. & Vana, R. (accepted). Tracking subject position change in U.S. Southwest Spanish: What 19th and 20th century Tucson newspapers tell us. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics.

Loza, S. & Vana, R. (2020). “Hola, my name is Carmen, who is this?”- Language ideologies and dialect stylization in prank calls. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 18(2), 133-152.

Padilla, L. & Vana, R. (2019). Ideologies in the foreign language curriculum: Insights from Spanish textbooks and instructors. Language Awareness, 28(1), 15-30.

Vana, R. (submitted). Contesting negative language attitudes toward heritage students’ Spanish in the mixed classroom. In P. Bayona & E. Garcia Martin (Eds.), Global Approaches to Mixed Language Classrooms. Multilingual Matters.

Vana, R. (In preparation). Why such differences? Language attitudes toward the Spanish heritage speaker variety in the advanced mixed class.

Recent Conferences

2022
(No)representation of Afro-Latin@s in Spanish textbooks, Modern Language Association, Marriot Marquis, Washington, DC. (with Lillie Padilla)

2021
The university Spanish heritage language mixed classes: Sociopolitics, attitudes, and ideologies, 12th Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. (with Sergio Loza)

The sociopolitics of Spanish heritage language mixed classes in higher education: Insights from language attitudinal and ideological data, 2nd International Conference of the Spanish Association of U.S. Hispanic Studies (MUROS), Universidad de León, León, Spain. (with Sergio Loza) (virtual)

The need for SHL institutionalization: The case of language attitudes and ideologies, SICLE International Community/Heritage Language Education Conference, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (virtual)

A critical analysis of Elite: Linguistic capital, ideologies, and marginalization, Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO), Virtual. (with Sergio Loza and Lillie Padilla)

Ideologies in foreign language curriculum, Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC), Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX. (with Lillie Padilla)

2020
Carmen and her dialect stylization- Prank Calls in the US, 3rd International Conference on Sociolinguistics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. (with Sergio Loza) *

“It’s so chunti”- Attitudes toward heritage students’ Spanish in the advanced mixed classroom, 7th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.

“You know, the red hot Cheeto fingers”- Language attitudes toward heritage students’ Spanish in the advanced mixed class, Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO), University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV (virtual)

2019
A historical-variationist analysis of subject pronoun expression in 19th and early 20th Century Arizonian Spanish, Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX. (with Álvaro-Cerrón-Palomino and Sergio Loza)

Courses Taught

SPAN 4371
SPAN 2312
SPAN 1411