In August 2026, Dr. Melissa Schuring had the opportunity to present two papers at Methods XIX, the 19th Methods in Dialectology and Language Diversity International Conference, held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Both presentations focused on methodological questions in the study of lexical innovation, with a particular focus on children’s use of English loanwords in Dutch.

The first presentation, Interviewing children: revisiting do’s and don’ts for developmental sociolinguists, explored how sociolinguistic interviews can be adapted to younger language users. Melissa discussed common challenges in eliciting lexical innovation from children and introduced new strategies to stimulate more spontaneous speech. She also presented a child corpus of English words in Dutch and an identification protocol for studying these forms as instances of lexical innovation.

The second presentation, co-authored with Laura Rosseel, was titled Multi-methods in developmental sociolinguistics: the more, the merrier? and explored what different methods can tell us about children’s use of anglicisms. Drawing on interviews, role play and reflection tasks, the study showed that different methods can produce strikingly different results. The findings therefore highlight the value of combining methods to capture the complexity of lexical innovation and the development of anglicisms in children’s language use. 

Melissa Schuring thanks ENEOLI for the support that made her participation in this conference possible and for the opportunity to discuss her research on lexical innovation and anglicisms with an international audience.