My research focuses on the production and perception of language variation, language change, and language acquisition.
For speech production, I investigate how language changes and varies by examining the role of social factors in how we speak. Production studies highlight the social motivation for language change and how language varies within communities. For speech perception, I examine the social connotations listeners associate with certain forms of speech. Perception studies provide insight into implicit bias: how some ways of speaking are socially valued more or less than other ways of speaking.
My research publications are listed below. The “open access” links will provide you the full-length article. For any other article, please contact me directly via LinkedIn.
Speech perception:
Language attitudes & Implicit bias
Regan, B., & Toribio, A.J. (2026). “Como está hablando con su mamá, está bien que haga el code-switching”: The social evaluation of situationally-based code-switching in West Texas. International Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development. OnlineFirst. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2025). ¡Hola mi a[ɾ]ma! The social evaluation of the rotacismo merger in Sevilla Spanish. In Mark Amengual & Amanda Dalola (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Approaches to Romance Linguistics: in honor of Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, 137- 164. John Benjamins.
Regan, B., & Martinez, J. (2023). The indeterminacy of social meaning linked to ‘Mexico’ and ‘Texas’ Spanish: Examining monoglossic language ideologies among heritage and L2 Spanish listeners. Languages, 8(4), 266. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2022). Guadaloop or Guadalupe?: Place-name variation and place identity in Austin, Texas. American Speech, 97(4), 441-482. (For my related Duolingo blog post click here).
Regan, B. (2022). La percepción social del seseo sevillano y sus implicaciones para la norma sevillana. Lingüística en la Red, Núm. XIX, 1-27. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2022). The social meaning of a merger: The evaluation of an Andalusian Spanish consonant merger (ceceo). Language in Society, 51(3), 481-510. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2022). Intra-regional differences in the social perception of allophonic variation: The evaluation of [tʃ] and [ʃ] in Huelva and Lepe (Western Andalucía). Journal of Linguistic Geography, 8(2), 82-101. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2021). Differing effects of speaker and listener characteristics on the perception of two traditional Andalusian features undergoing dialect leveling. In L.A. Ortiz-López & E.-M. Suárez-Büdenbender (Eds.), Topics in Spanish Linguistic Perceptions, 95-116. Routledge.
Regan, B. (2019). Dialectology meets Sociophonetics: The social evaluation of ceceo and distinción in Lepe, Spain. In W. Chappell (Ed.), Recent Advances in the Study of Spanish Sociophonetic Perception, 85-121. John Benjamins.
Speech production:
How language varies and changes
Baird, B., & Regan, B. (2025). The status of /f/ in Mayan-accented Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 18(1), 1-35. (Open access)
Mastrantuono, A., & Regan, B. (2024). Present Perfect and Preterit Variation in the Spanish of Lima and Mexico City: Findings from a corpus analysis. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 20(2), 375-405. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2023). Individual differences in the acquisition of language-specific and dialect-specific allophones of intervocalic /d/ by L2 and heritage Spanish speakers studying abroad in Sevilla. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 45(1), 65-92. (Open access)
Tieperman, R., & Regan, B. (2023). A variationist corpus analysis of the definite article with personal names across three varieties of Spanish (Chilean, Mexican, Andalusian). Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 9(1)/10: 1-27. (Open access)
Archer, C., & Regan, B. (2022). An analysis of the yeísmo merger in Córdoba, Argentina: A synchronic coexistence of all diachronic processes of lleísmo to yeísmo sound change. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 28(2), Article 2. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2021). Analyzing Andalusian coronal fricative norms (ceceo, seseo, and distinción) using a sociophonetic Demerger Index. In M. Díaz-Campos (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish, 137-158. Routledge.
Regan, B. (2020). The split of a fricative merger due to dialect contact and societal changes: A sociophonetic study on Andalusian Spanish read-speech. Language Variation and Change, 32(2), 159-190. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2020). Extending Pillai scores to fricative mergers: Advancing a gradient analysis of a split-in-progress in Andalusian Spanish. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 26(2), Article 13. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2020). El [ʃ]oquero: /tʃ/ variation in Huelva capital and surrounding towns. Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XXIX, 55-90. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2017). A linguistic analysis of Quechua borrowings in Matto de Turner’s Aves sin nido: National ideology seen through linguistic incorporation. Hispanic Studies Review, 2(2), 224-253. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2017). A study of ceceo variation in Western Andalusia (Huelva). Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 10(1), 19-60. (Open access)
Regan, B. (2016). Prosody-pragmatics interface in the pragmaticalization of ¡Hombre! as a discourse marker. In A. Cuza, L. Czerwionka, & D. Olson (Eds.), Inquiries in Hispanic Linguistics: From theory to empirical evidence, 211-239. John Benjamins.