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Aspects of socially-conditioned phonetic variation in speech. These include sound change, social and regional variation, phonetic style-shifting, and the study of how socially-conditioned phonetic variation can be accommodated by models of speech perception and production.
Work in sociophonetics sits at the interface between sociolinguistics and phonetics. The specific topics we address in this course will be determined by students' interests, but likely areas of investigation include (i) speech production: how does speech production vary? What phonetic aspects of speech function indexically? That is, which aspects of pronunciation correlate with non-linguistic factors? How does speech vary between speakers, e.g. according to their age, gender, social class, regional background, ethnicity? How does speech vary within speakers, e.g. according to their speaking style, their communicative context, their emotional state, their attitude? (ii) speech perception: how do we identify the social or regional background of speakers? How do we perceive distinctions between different words, and can those distinctions be affected by who we think is talking? How do people perceive changes in progress? Are they aware, on some level, who is leading the change? How do people perceive e.g. the emotional state of the speaker? (iii) sociophonetic methodology: what things need to be considered when collecting data for sociophonetic research? What is the best type of recording equipment (recorders, microphones etc)? How do we combine audio and video data for sociophonetic work? What about the practicalities of recording 'good' data? What are the best statistical techniques to use for sociophonetic work? (iv) theories of sociophonetics: what theory best handles sociophonetic data?
Through their experiences with this course, students should be able to: Synthesise literature from the field of sociophonetics, identify gaps, and design research questions which help fill those gapsCritically evaluate published work in sociophonetics Design experiments in speech production and perceptionPlan a research project from conception through to completionHandle large datasets systematically and efficiently Present results effectively and clearlyExpectations:Students are expected to regularly attend our class sessions, take an active part in class discussions, and freely share ideas and insights with everybody in the class.
Subject to approval of the Programme Director.
Kevin Watson
There is no set textbook for this course. All course participants will be added to a LING412 Mendeley group (see http://www.mendeley.com/), where we will gather readings during the course. Other material, which may be helpful, can be found at the Library Subject Guide for Linguistics: http://canterbury.libguides.com/
Library portalThe course outline is available on LEARN (only for students enrolled in this course). LEARN
Domestic fee $1,562.00
International Postgraduate fees
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
This course will not be offered if fewer than 2 people apply to enrol.
For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .