Biography
Michael Woods is a Continuing Instructor in the Department of Spanish. He was born in Snohomish, WA and has traveled extensively throughout Central and South America. He holds a BA in Spanish from Western Washington University and a MA in Contemporary Latinx Studies from Oregon State University. He is working on finishing his PhD program in Hispanic Linguistics through the University of New Mexico. His fields of research include Spanish sociolinguistics, sociology of language, language attitudes, language and identity(ies), language politics, Spanish in the US, and Spanish language education. He has published on Salvadoran and Honduran voseo; more specifically, second person singular pronoun choice (Woods & Rivera-Mills 2010), language attitudes (Woods & Rivera-Mills 2012), and linguistic predictor variables conditioning vos/tú among Salvadorans (Woods & Shin 2016). He is currently working on his dissertation tentatively titled: “Intraethnic Language Attitudes and (Un)Belonging among Salvadorans in Salem, Oregon.” Michael also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras with the youth development program and is a Qualified Spanish/English Healthcare Interpreter with the State of Oregon.