LSA 229: Sociophonetics

Robert Podesva | session 2 | MW 1:30 – 3:15, 155 Donner Lab

This course examines the phonetic aspects of sociolinguistic variation and the social significance of phonetic variation, from the perspectives of both theory and methodology. Our goals will be to (a) acquire the phonetic foundation necessary to conduct sociophonetic research, pursuing social lines of inquiry with proper techniques for phonetic analysis; (b) locate and explain phonetic variation in its full social context while drawing on current approaches to the relationship between language and society; and (c) survey new research that addresses the intersection of the social and the phonetic. We will address all domains of sound, including vowels, consonants, prosody, and voice quality. Class time will consist of lectures, discussions, and data workshops.

Reading: Selected materials available online.

Prerequisites: introductory sociolinguistics, familiarity with acoustic phonetics (spectrographic analysis).

Areas of linguistics: Phonetics, phonology, and morphology; Sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology