Mason A. Wirtz

Dr. Mason A. Wirtz

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Prior to my current position, I was a research associate (predoc and postdoc) and senior scientist at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and I held graduate teaching and research scholarships at Bowling Green State University, USA. I received my PhD (2020–2023) in German linguistics with a focus on second language acquisition and variationist sociolinguistics from the University of Salzburg (supervised by Prof. Andrea Ender, University of Salzburg, PD Irmtraud Kaiser, University of Salzburg, and Prof. Simone E. Pfenninger, University of Zurich).

My primary research interests include psycholinguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, and second language acquisition (SLA) in adulthood, especially as concerns quantitative approaches and statistical methods. In my work on SLA, I am interested in the role of psychosocial, linguistic, and cognitive factors on the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in L2 learning during (young) adulthood, and how socioaffective, experiential, and contextual variables impact additional language learning among mature adults. My habilitation project merges psycho- and sociolinguistic approaches in order to investigate how major life events (e.g., entry into the workforce, parenthood, retirement) affect language variation and change across the lifespan.

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Education


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Research Interests

Second language acquisition

Variationist sociolinguistics and dialectology

Multilingualism

Research methods