The Sociophonetics Lab is home to a variety of sociolinguistic and phonetic studies involving both typical speaker-hearers and those with hearing loss or speech disorders. Our sociolinguistic work is concerned with the relationships between language use and social factors -- including differences between social groups (region, age, gender, hearing status, etc.), shifts within language users (based on situation, audience, social role, etc.), and attitudes about speakers and language varieties. Our phonetic work involves acoustic analysis -- measuring components of sound from audio recordings (pitch, loudness, speech rate, resonance frequencies) -- and listeners' perceptions of differences between speech sounds. Many projects involve both socio- and phonetic aspects.
We ask questions like:
This long-term project aims to better understand how social and linguistic experiences affect the social and emotional well-being of young people with hearing loss.
How can we improve understanding and attitudes between students and their international TAs and instructors?
How does the perceived gender of a speaker's voice interact with the gender associated with words?