Zion Ariana Mengesha

Biography

As a linguistic anthropologist, my research program aims to articulate the relations among Black expressive practices, language ideologies, and the sociopolitical structures that regiment our everyday lives. Specifically, I examine the semiotic resources African Americans use in the performance of gender. My current project examines the linguistic expression of respectability and respectability politics among African American women in Sacramento, CA. I also research linguistic bias toward African Americans in education and artificial intelligence, and I was previously the sociolinguistics subject matter expert on Google’s Responsible AI User Experience team. My research interests include linguistic ethnography, language variation and change, African American English, language and gender, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction.