Dr. Dana Serditova

2020 – 2024 Ph.D. | (summa cum laude) University of Freiburg

English Department, Linguistics

Dissertation title: Salience in New Orleans English

2018 – 2020 M.A. | (with honors) Heidelberg University

English Department. Major: Linguistics

Dana Serditova’s PhD, titled "Salience in New Orleans English," focused on identifying and describing distinct features of New Orleans English, such as the PIN~PEN merger, /l/-vocalization, and /aɪ/-monophthongization. Consequently, her research interests revolve around sociolinguistics, (socio)phonetics and phonology, and language variation and change. She has studied dialectal variation in North America, England, and Australia. Additionally, she is interested in bias in speech recognition and human-machine interaction.

Dana’s postdoctoral project is situated at the intersection of sociolinguistics and speech technology and is conducted in collaboration with researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Hochschule Düsseldorf, and Newcastle University. It aims to investigate how users adapt their speech when interacting with dialect-sensitive versus neutral voice assistants. At HHU, she collaborates with Prof. Dr. Kevin Tang (external link, opens in a new window). At Newcastle University, she collaborates with Prof. Karen Corrigan (external link, opens in a new window).

Available to supervise BA theses in sociolinguistics, dialectology, phonetics and phonology, ASR, human-machine interaction, AI-induced language change, and related fields.

Natural Disasters, Displacement, and Language | Seminar

Text, Style, and Social Meaning | Seminar

Accents against the Machine: The Sociolinguistics of Speech Technology | Advanced Seminar

Linguistic Variation in Urban North America | Seminar

Linguistics in the Classroom: Phonetics & Phonology | Seminar

Introduction to Sociolinguistics | Seminar

Introduction to Linguistics | Tutorial

Journal articles

Serditova, Dana, and Katie Carmichael. 2025. "Meet Me on Tomorrow by Your Mama's House: A sociolinguistic investigation of phrasal constructions in New Orleans English" Lingua 328, 104040, doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.104040 (external link, opens in a new window).

Serditova, Dana, Kevin Tang, and Jochen Steffens. 2025. "Automatic Speech Recognition Biases in Newcastle English: an Error Analysis". Interspeech 2025, 3204-3208, doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2025-1973 (external link, opens in a new window).

Serditova, Dana. 2020. "Australian Food Slang". Studia Neofilologiczne, z. XVI: 151-170, doi.org/10.16926/sn.2020.16.08 (external link, opens in a new window).

2026. International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, ICLaVE 13 (Lausanne, Switzerland).

Talk 1:  A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Automatic Speech Recognition Bias in Newcastle English (with Kevin Tang).

Talk 2: Meet Me on Tomorrow by Your Mama's House: A sociolinguistic investigation of phrasal constructions in New Orleans English (with Katie Carmichael).

2026. International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME47) (Koblenz, Germany). A Corpus for Studying Voice-AI Bias and Dialectal Adaptation in  Newcastle English (with Kevin Tang and Jochen Steffens).

2025. INTERSPEECH 2025 (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). Automatic Speech Recognition Biases in Newcastle English: an Error Analysis (with Kevin Tang and Jochen Steffens).

2025. DGfS 2025 Computational Linguistics Poster Session (Mainz, Germany). Regional biases in Automatic Speech Recognition: the case of Newcastle English, poster (with K. Tang, J. Steffens, V. Reichmann, P. Thees).

2024. 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (virtual, USA). Mapping the sounds of New Orleans: acoustic measurements of vowel mergers.

2024. International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, ICLaVE 12 (Vienna, Austria). /aɪ/-Monophthongization in New Orleans English.

2024. Konstanz Linguistics Conference (Konstanz, Germany). PIN~PEN Merger in New Orleans English.

2023. Social Meaning Berlin (Berlin, Germany). The Speech of Creoles in New Orleans and its Social Meaning, poster.

2021. Hermann Paul School of Linguistics Day (Basel, Switzerland). Salience in New Orleans English.

2021. 11th International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology (ICHLL11) (Logroño, Spain). Australian Food Slang: a study of restaurant menus.