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 the degree to which social and phonetic information are linked in the mind and on how they are accessed (and influence each other) 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) and LING 640S (Sociolinguistics) are prerequisites for this course. Students are encouraged to take LING 640Y (Psycholinguistics) and/or LING 611 (Acoustic Phonetics) before or concurrently with this course. Graduate standing at UHM is required to take this course.

This course is offered Spring semester every other year.

Drager, Katie, Rebecca Clifford and Jennifer Hay 2011. The production and perception of a low back vowel merger. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 40, Georgetown.

Grama, James 2012. The indexical weight of a single formant in California English. Paper presented at the LSA Annual Meeting. Portland, January 2012.

Kirtley, M. Joelle 2011. A study of the perception of four linguistic variables and their relationship to military speech. Paper presented at NWAV 40 at Georgetown.