His phonetic, phonological, and sociolinguistic research has examined aspects of the voicing of consonants in Korean and of the vowels of the Portuguese dialect spoken in the Azores.

Since 2015 he has served as the Provost and Academic Vice President of Salem State University in Massachusetts.

Silva was a charter member and first president of Chapter 300 at UT Arlington in 2007, as well as serving nationally as the society’s southwest regional representative.

[8] Silva’s work has promoted a better understanding of smaller, non-standard dialect varieties, such as that spoken by Portuguese-American Immigrants from São Miguel.

Besides phonological work that inventories the unique vowel set of the São Miguel dialect, Silva’s keynote address at the National Portuguese Honor Society induction at Rhode Island College in 2016 focused on this social responses to the variety.