Yliana Rodríguez

What’s the work that you do?

I am studying language contact in the Falkland Islands, particularly Spanish-English contact as evidence of historical events and the meeting of cultures. This particular case is unique, since it is the only one in which an American Spanish variety came into contact with a Southern Hemisphere British English dialect. Language contact in the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic regions is an under-researched -but promising- field of study.

What keeps you going?

Research demands creativity, quick problem solving as well as long term reflection. That is quite a combination of skills, all of which are extremely attractive to me. I love reading and tying the knots, doing ethnographic field-work (chatting with different types of people), and also sitting down for hours in front of my laptop to process and analyse data.

What’s your message to the world?

Linguistic phenomena are transversal to all cultural events. The more educated and knowledgeable we are about them, the better equipped we will be for being better inhabitants of Planet Earth. Polar research, in particular, embodies a distinct environment which should lead to new insights and findings on linguistic matters as well as any other scientific fields.