Speech in Society

3 credits · Undergraduate

Even within a single language or dialect, speech can vary greatly. Variation occurs between groups, between individuals, and even within individuals in different contexts. The primary influence for such speech variation is social factors such as gender or class. While many differences can be found in word choice or sentence structure, most variability occurs in pronunciation. The study of social influences on pronunciation is known as 'sociophonetics', an interface of the two subfield, sociolinguistics and phonetics. In this course we will explore the development of the field, the linguistic features which vary, the social factors influencing these differences, questions of how children acquire knowledge of sociophonetic variation, as well