The growing subfield of sociophonetics focuses on instrumental phonetic techniques within a variationist sociolinguistic approach. Through investigating sociophonetic variation in both speech production and perception, researchers are shedding light on (1) the degree to which social and phonetic information are linked in the mind and (2) how this information is accessed when speaking and listening.

In this course, we will examine the relationship between social factors and phonetic detail (as well as other levels of the grammar), investigating specifically how these different types of information are stored in the mind and accessed during the production and perception of speech. To complement the naturalistic data and social theory discussed in LING640S, this course will focus on experimental techniques and mental representations of linguistic information.

This course will give students hands-on experience with designing and conducting experiments. For the final project, students are required to conduct a small-scale study investigating a research question of relevance to phonological and/or sociolinguistic theory.

LING 410 (Articulatory Phonetics) is a prerequisite for this course. Students are encouraged to take LING640S (Sociolinguistics) and/or LING640Y (Psycholinguistics) before enrolling in this course. Graduate standing at UHM is required to take this course.

This course is only offered every other year.