Sociophonetics

This advanced seminar deals with a variety of topics at the interface of phonetics and sociolinguistics or, in other words, with the social life of spoken language. For example, how do social aspects shape language systems and what does systematic pronunciation variation within and across speaker groups tell us about a language community? In order to approach these topics, articles on the following topics will be presented by individual participants and discussed in the group: (1) internally and externally motivated diachronic sound change processes, (2) language and dialect acquisition, (3) gender-specific and socially determined phonetic-phonological differences, and (4) perception of regional variation.