More Issues: Towards Best Practices in Sociophonetics

Marianna Di Paolo, University of Utah
Malcah Yaeger-Dror, University of Arizona
Paul Foulkes, University of York

Our goal in this workshop will be to continue the discussion on best practices in sociophonetics begun at the NWAVE33, Ann Arbor, Sept. 30, 2004 meeting, taking up some specific issues of general interest. The interdisciplinary nature of sociophonetics makes it difficult, especially for researchers at institutions with fewer resources (funds and people), to keep up with technical and theoretical advances in acoustic phonetics, speech perception, and recording technology; and theoretical advances in social structure and, of course, in linguistic theory. At the same time, there are a growing number of researchers who are interested in engaging in sociophonetic projects. The field as a whole will benefit from our providing quick access to methodological/technical/procedural information from the best labs to researchers at other institutions.

While there currently are resources available, they probably reflect the practices of specific labs and may not be available, at least not obviously so, to others. In addition, a single lab is less likely to provide the same level of review of its practices than a relatively independent group charged with producing state-of-the-art critical reviews at a remove from any one specific research project.

The lively discussion at the NWAVE 33 workshop made it very clear that many active researchers wonder how their own laboratory practices compare to those of others. The size of the audience suggested that even those who are not actively working in sociophonetics want information on best practices.

While it was clear that people were very interested in discussing best practices, the previous discussion did not lead to specific conclusions. At NWAVE 34, we will lead a more focused discussion of just a few major issues to increase the likelihood of specific outcomes. The discussion will consist of three 30-minute segments each of which will end by recording specific recommendations. To make it more likely that the discussions will be productive, we will send a longer version of this abstract out to the email list compiled at the last session and to others who we hope will join the discussion.

The first 25 minutes of each segment will be devoted to discussing a set of issues. In the last five minutes we will bring the discussion to some conclusions based on general consensus. Last year.s session focused on vowel analysis to the exclusion of other problems. This year will focus on three of those other "problem" areas. The topics for the three segments are as follows:

Segment 1: What information about the methodology or procedures of a sociophonetic study should every presenter at NWAVE make easily available and how should it be made available?

Segment 2: Measuring obstruents

Segment 3: Measuring (r)/(l)

The results of the discussion will be posted on an appropriate website.