Welcome to a Voice in Progress!  My name is Maria Lee and I’m a senior at the University of Michigan doing a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and a Minor in Writing through Sweetland. I’m planning to become a doctor, or at least work in healthcare, which I think was one of the main motivators for me doing this project.  I believe it is important to understand a variety of perspectives as someone planning to work in the healthcare field. Learning about the place language has taken in society has really expanded my knowledge on that.

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This project started out as an exploration in different dialects in the US but morphed to examine the role of language in my own life.  I enjoy learning about history a lot. I really like tracing the why and how different events connect and affect the developments of other things around them. Language is one of the biggest tools that develops and responds to human events. I think that was a large influence as to why I wanted to do this project. Not only did it force me to sit down and write something, I’m very bad about committing to a writing idea, but exploring the idea of connections through language sounded so fun. I certainly didn’t expect to go from exploring historical relationships to my own. Language has captivated me, as you will see in this project, because of how vast its influence is and also with how nuanced it is in the little subfields. Many people can take one general topic about language and run so many different researches, projects, etc. with it. So, here’s mine. 

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