My research investigates the sources of variation in bilingual speech and language processing. I am particularly interested in situations in which the same linguistic pattern has several plausible explanations. A difference observed among bilingual speakers may reflect bilingual experience or crosslinguistic interaction, but it may also arise from linguistic structure, lexical organization, regional background, task conditions, patterns of language use, or individual speaker histories. My work uses experimental production and perception, acoustic analysis, lexical-retrieval measures, and quantitative comparisons to distinguish among these possibilities.
My dissertation, Crosslinguistic Influence in Lexical Stress Production and Perception among Heritage Spanish Speakers in the U.S., examines these questions through Spanish–English lexical stress. I examine how phonological structure, lexical relationships, task conditions, and bilingual experience contribute to individual patterns of performance by studying production and perception within the same heritage speakers and comparing controlled elicitation with narration, cognates with non-cognates, and minimal stress pairs across Spanish and English.
My current research extends this work in three directions: production–perception relationships within individual speakers, task sensitivity across elicitation conditions, and lexical influences on stress processing. A longer-term goal is to characterize bilingual experience more precisely by separating dimensions such as exposure, literacy, language use, educational history, and interactional context and determining which dimensions are associated with particular linguistic outcomes.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Bilingual speech and language processing
Heritage bilingualism and heritage Spanish
Speech production and perception
Bilingual phonetics and phonology
Crosslinguistic influence and language contact
Individual differences in bilingual language processing
Second language acquisition
Experimental and quantitative methods
RESEARCH METHODS
Experimental speech production and perception
Acoustic phonetic analysis
Lexical-retrieval tasks
Within-speaker designs
Quantitative analysis
Praat
R
SPSS
Qualtrics
PUBLICATIONS
Peered-reviewed Articles
Malacara, J. (2027). Phonetic Variation and Phonotactic Adaptation of the TL Cluster in U.S. Heritage Spanish. Heritage Language Journal. [In Press].
Malacara, J. (2026). Practical Strategies for Developing Speaking Skills in Asynchronous L2 Courses. L2 Journal 18 (1), 1-16. University of California, Berkeley. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9wt6c9p7
Malacara, J. (2025). Influencia del Inglés en el Español de Herencia en los Estados Unidos: Transferencia Fonética y Variación Vocálica en Houston. Plurilinkgua 21 (1), 4-28. https://plurilinkgua.org/volumenes/volumen-21/volumen-21-numero-1/
Book Chapters
Malacara, J. (2026). Acceso Léxico en Contextos Fronterizos: Evidencia de Bilingües Español-Inglés en Tijuana. In N. Samperio Sánchez (Coord.), Investigaciones Académicas en Enseñanza de Lenguas, Traducción y Estudios del Lenguaje (pp 91–.118). Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/414776778_Acceso_lexico_en_contextos_fronterizos_evidencia_de_bilingues_espanol-ingles_en_Tijuana
TALKS & RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
Invited Keynote Speaker
Malacara, J. (April 2026). Rethinking Language Instruction in Higher Education: Integrating SOFLA and CLIL for Multidisciplinary Classrooms. American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.
Malacara, J. (March 2026). Reshaping Language Instruction in Synchronous Online and Hybrid Settings. Anáhuac University, Querétaro, Mexico.
Malacara, J. (March 2025). Practical Strategies for Language Instruction in Asynchronous Settings. Anáhuac University, Querétaro, Mexico.
Research Presentations
Malacara, J. (March 2025). Adaptation and Maintenance of Rhotics in the Latin American Spanish of Houston. XXIV SPAGrad Linguistics & Literature Conference, Arizona State University.
Malacara, J. (March 2025). The Influence of English on Heritage Spanish: Phonetic Transfer and Vowel Variation in Houston. XXIV SPAGrad Linguistics & Literature Conference, Arizona State University.
Malacara, J. (October 2024). Phonetic Variation in the Production of the /tl/ Consonant Cluster in U.S. Spanish. 4th International Conference on Literacy, Culture and Language Education, Purdue University.
Malacara, J. (August 2024). Variación Fonética en la Producción de la Secuencia Consonántica /tl/ en el español de Herencia de los EE.UU. 1er Congreso Internacional de Lingüística. Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. México.