Sociophonetics; A Student's Guide

Sociophonetics: a student’s guide provides a practical ‘how-to’ manual that will give students a clear understanding of the technical and theoretical advances in acoustic phonetics, speech perception, and recording technology which is essential for sociolinguistic research.

Balancing theory, practical information and research protocol, this book:

• Covers the key methodological, technical and procedural information needed to undertake sociophonetic research
• Includes contributions from key academics and ground-breaking researchers
• Incorporates exercises and projects in each chapter
• Has a companion website that provides additional materials for students and professors, featuring exercises, links to on-line sources for specific tools and includes a large selection of audio and video clips.

Sociophonetics is essential reading for graduate students and researchers with interests in sociophonetics, phonology and for those undertaking research projects in applied linguistics.

Marianna Di Paolo is currently Associate Professor at the University of Utah where she has served as Director of the Linguistics Program (1993-1999) and then as the first Chair of the Department of Linguistics (1999-2005). Her primary research interest has been variation and change in the English of the Intermountain West with a concentration on on-going phonetic and phonological changes in the vowels of this region.

Malcah Yaeger-Dror is currently a research scientist at the University of Arizona. Her primary research interests include the analysis of disagreement strategies keynoting prosodic variation and the analysis of the cognitive underpinnings which can reveal whether a given 'change' produced by a speaker is from 'above' or 'below' the speaker's 'level of awareness'.