In episode 139, Stacey interviews Matthew Griffin, an applied linguist and instructor of Spanish who recently published a paper analyzing textbooks for how they present “voseo” to novice learners. “Vos” is a pronoun used widely in Latin America, and not used in European varieties of Spanish. Matthew goes on to talk about the concept of linguistic variation, as well as how and why we should point out and celebrate different varieties of the languages we teach. For those interested in teaching voseo, this interview and the accompanying open-access article provide a practical and research-based exploration of this topic.
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Show Notes
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Matthew Griffin has 10 years of experience teaching ESL and Spanish at a variety of higher education institutions. In the fall he will join the North Iowa Area Community College faculty as a Spanish Instructor and will oversee the development of their online Spanish program. In addition to his teaching, Matthew is finishing up his PhD in Applied Spanish Linguistics at UW-Madison. His research interests include phonetics and pronunciation training, digital technologies, and heritage speakers. Reach out to Matthew on Twitter @yodpungtiem or on his website.
Don’t miss Matthew’s article free and open-access in Volume 5 of Spanish & Portuguese Review.
If you want to cite this episode, our suggested APA reference is:
Johnson, S.M. (Interviewer/Producer). (2020). We Teach Languages Episode 139: Teaching Linguistic Variation such as Voseo in Spanish [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from
Thank you very much for inviting me onto your podcast! I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss my article on voseo with you.