230203 Vowels & Identity (S) (SoSe 2025)

In this seminar, we will investigate the relationship between vowel pronunciations in English and various social factors (such as age, gender/sexuality, socioeconomic background), which is the essence of the discipline called sociophonetics. Sociophonetics is a research field that combines approaches and methods from sociolinguistics and phonetics & phonology.
Students will be introduced to the basics of sociophonetics and interesting research that can shed light on the relation between social factors and speech production (esp. vowels) with a focus on the pronunciation of Englishes around the world and their speakers. Students will get to know important terminology, theoretical concepts and methodologies for the investigation of linguistic variation that focuses on pronunciation. Also, we will take a close look at empirical work in linguistics in general as students will have to conduct their own sociophonetic analyses (e.g. with phonetics software like Praat) as part of a mini group project to complete this course.

Requirements for participation, required level

Having completed the other elements of the Basis3 module (i.e. "Introduction to English Linguistics" (Basis3.1) and "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" (Basis3.2)) before attending this seminar is highly recommended!

Bibliography

e.g.

Di Paolo, M. & M. Yaeger-Dror (2011). Sociophonetics. A Student's Guide. London: Routledge.
Kendall, T. & V. Fridland (2021). Sociophonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, E. R. (2010). Sociophonetics: An Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave.