The main focus of my research involves bringing empirical data from linguistics and psychology to bear upon debates within the philosophy of language. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which these data might force us to reconsider traditional assumptions about how language works.

My dissertation argued that contrary to the theoretical orthodoxy, nonarbitrary sound/meaning connections are a pervasive feature of natural language expressions. Some words function like pictures, more function like analogies, and both classes are nonarbitrary. To demonstrate this, I show that empirical data, like the bouba/kiki paradigm, are best explained by a sensitivity to nonarbitrary connections between the articulatory actions that are constitutively linked to our perceptions of certain words and the meanings those words have. These nonarbitrary connections are theoretically significant because they are relevant to issues like how language develops, what language is for, and what our intuitive truth value judgments track.

My time teaching computer ethics has also made me interested in the ethical issues surrounding digital privacy and autonomous machines. However, my research in these areas is still in the planning stage.