Virtual Summit Submission

Florida State University
Computer Science and Linguistics

Biography

William Merrix is a senior at Florida State University pursuing dual degrees: a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics and a B.S. in Linguistics with a minor in Political Philosophy. His research interests include pragmatics, discourse, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics. His current research examines the intersection between language and politics through the lens of discourse and pragmatics. His other work focuses on the intersection of technology, human-computer interaction, and language attitudes. On campus, William is the Co-Editor-In-Chief of the Political Review at Florida State. Following his graduation in Spring 2027, William will pursue a graduate degree in linguistics and a law degree.

Project

Since the death of founding president Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993, Ivorian politics have been shaped by ethnopolitics, particularly the ideology of ivoirité, or "Ivorianness," which has privileged southern, Christian populations over northern-descended, largely Muslim communities. Amid this backdrop, Nouchi, a street creole that emerged in Abidjan in the late 1970s and 1980s, has grown from a marginalized youth vernacular into a widely used register, even among politicians courting disenfranchised populations. This study asks how Ivorians, particularly Nouchi speakers, use language to conceptualize political agency and human rights amid ongoing ethnopolitical tension and democratic backsliding. Over seven weeks in Abidjan during summer 2026, I conducted 13 semi-structured interviews and 3 focus groups with Nouchi speakers, university students, and former student activists, working with a Nouchi-speaking translator and collaborators at Félix Houphouët-Boigny University. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively through critical discourse analysis. Preliminary findings suggest that Nouchi, through its linguistic characteristics, functions as a form of political capital, giving sociopolitically underrepresented communities political agency and space they would otherwise not have. This research contributes to understanding how marginalized communities use language to claim political agency where formal power is inaccessible.