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Bio
I was born and raised in Colorado, with deep family roots in the state. All of my education and certifications have also been in Colorado, culminating in a linguistics PhD from CU Boulder. As a linguistic anthropologist and educator, I focus on language, visual expression, and other aspects of communicating through the human experience. I do so from a variety of sociocultural perspectives – language as a resource to act in the world, language as a device for calibrating thoughts and actions, language as an emergent product of communicative interactions, and language as history.Degree
PhD in Linguistics
University of Colorado Boulder
BA in Linguistics
University of Colorado Denver
Published Works
- Sandoval, A. R. (2025). The Ancient Maya Script of Hand Forms Embedded in Figural Art: A Decipherment of Numerals Signed by the Rulers of Altar Q. Transactions of the Philological Society (Wiley-Blackwell)https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12320.
- Sandoval, A. R., Quizar, O. S. (2022). Ch'orti' Project website. , https://sites.msudenver.edu/chortiproject/
- Quizar, R., Sandoval, A. R. (2021). The Ch'orti' Project Collaboration. Colorado Research in Linguistics, 25 .
- Sandoval, A. R. (2016). Gesture-speech bimodalism in Arapaho grammar: An interactional approach. University of Colorado, Boulder. https://www.proquest.com/openview/0e957e47dc10da88a133e89349b20528/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750
- Sandoval, A. R. (2014). Gestures in northern Native America: Bimodal Talk in Arapaho. Mouton De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110302028.1215
- Sandoval, A. R. (2013). The Forefinger/Thumb Alternation in Arapaho Pointing: Participation Space as a Frame of Reference. Berkeley Linguistics Society, https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v39i1.3896
- Sandoval, A. R. (2012). Revisiting Obama’s ‘You didn’t build that’: When Gesture is a Part of Speech. Anthropology News,
Research Interests
I engage with many sub- and allied fields of linguistic anthropology, including multimodal discourse analysis, epigraphy, and language documentation. Specifically, I research issues around the signed-language practices and ancient traditions of Indigenous America. Notably, this includes a form of hand-sign writing used by the Ancient Maya. Some of my other work has focused on documenting and describing the mixing of signed language and speech that is particular to Arapaho language (which is indigenous to Colorado's Front Range). Other research has included historical and sociolinguistic developments of Spanish and English in the Southwest, US. I've also acted as co-Director of the Ch'orti' Project, which worked in collaboration with MSU Denver's Ethnography Lab. This primary goal of the project is to support the language revitalization and reclamation efforts of the Ch'orti' (Mayan) communities of Guatemala and Honduras.
Teaching Interests
My courses span the breadth of linguistic anthropology. Topics include qualitative-linguistic approaches to culture, human social interaction, and writing systems. I keep students engaged through interesting and relatable content, providing ample opportunity for critical discussion, data analysis, and skills application.