Dr. Ally Milner holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of Houston. She specializes in sociolinguistics & sociophonetics, with an emphasis on Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. Her undergoing project VoceSTL, a sociolinguistic corpus of Spanish spoken in the Greater St. Louis region, seeks to illuminate and celebrate the linguistic variety in and around WashU. She is passionate in her teaching about helping heritage Spanish speakers, multilingual learners, and second language learners alike develop oral competency and confidence within their communication.
Dr. Milner joined Washu in 2024 and serves as the course coordinator for SPAN 2020, Intermediate Spanish II. She also currently teaches undergraduate courses in Hispanic Linguistics, including:
- SPAN 3202 Debating Cultures: How Spanish Works
- SPAN 3220 Debating Cultures: How Spanish Works
- SPAN 3660 Researching Cultures: Sociolinguistics of the Spanish-Speaking World
- SPAN 4170 Spanish Phonetics, Phonology, and Dialectology (seminar)
Her recent publications include:
- Milner, A (2024). Impersonal Expressions in Texas Spanish. Spanish in Context, 21(3), 598-621. Doi: 10.1075/sic.21028.mil
- Milner, A (2021). El diptongo/hiato como rasgo contrastivo: un estudio perceptual con hablantes de herencia de español. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 14(2), 459-496. Doi: https://doi-org.libproxy.washu.edu/10.1515/shll-2021-2052
Dr. Milner is a first-generation college graduate. Her non-academic interests include running, reading fiction, and attempting to crochet.