Kristen Syrett
Why did you choose Northwestern?
The reputation of the University and the Department of Linguistics, the connection between Linguistics, Psychology, and Communication Sciences and Disorders, the world-renowned faculty, the resources available to do high-quality research, and the proximity to Chicago.
How would you describe your research and/or work to a non-academic audience? What was it then and/or what it is now?
I am a psycholinguist, a language acquisitionist, and a semanticist. What this basically means, is that I study meaning–how we assign meaning to the words we acquire, how we interpret the meaning of speakers' utterances, and how meaning is assigned based on the context in which we're communicating, given our cognitive capacities and knowledge about the world around us.
Tell us who or what inspired your research and/or work.
I am fascinated by how children engage with the world around them, and rapidly negotiate meaning in words, gestures, and facial expressions so rapidly. We are communicative creatures by default, and this ability is there from the early moments of development all the way through adulthood. The deep questions that we ask in cognition, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics about categories, ontology, and meaning are all captured even in the simplest of questions like, What does it mean to use a label like "cup" or "dog" to refer to an object in our environment? What does it mean for an individual to assess something as "big" or "fun" or "yummy?" In all of these connections, what we see is that language is woven into the way we engage with and receive the world around us.
What are you most proud of in your career to date?
The work I do is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing from linguistics, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and other domains. More recently, I've also been drawn to advocating for the relationship between language and social justice. It's challenging to keep track of all of the moving pieces and bring them together in a way that makes sense and can be communicated clearly. I hope that I'm doing that well.
Tell us about a current achievement or something you're working on that excites you.
Within my research, I've been especially excited about finding parallels between objects and object properties that demonstrate that even from a very young age and throughout development, we're measuring and evaluating the world according to standards that tightly connected to how we treat categories and concepts in our cognition. These connections have important implications not just for word learning, but for linguistic and conceptual representations throughout our lifespan.
Outside of my research, I'm especially excited about the advocacy for inclusivity and diversity I've been doing in the field, and the resources I've collaborated on that support mentoring of junior and emerging researchers. These professional activities help to create a more inclusive and supportive community of researchers and open the door for a wider variety of research and discussions to take place.
What advice would you give your younger self or someone considering a similar path?
Continue to have conversations with people outside of your discipline to find inspiration, and be mentored by people who can provide you with a diversity of perspective and success.