Sunwoo (Sunny) Lee is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics at Georgetown University, pursuing a concentration in Theoretical Linguistics with a minor in Applied Linguistics. With a foundation in experimental phonetics and phonology, her current research investigates pronunciation as a socially and ideologically mediated practice, focusing on how accentedness and comprehensibility are perceived across cultural contexts and how such perceptions reflect broader constructs of identity, standardness, and linguistic legitimacy. By examining speakers across dialectal, heritage, and L2 backgrounds, she explores how social expectations and linguistic experience jointly shape phonological outcomes and language development. She is also interested in how emerging AI speech technologies may relate to pronunciation ideologies in multilingual settings.
