This book is a well-written and welcome addition to existing literature, providing, as its title suggests, an introduction to the field of sociophonetics, a relatively recent sub-discipline that is growing in popularity and prominence. Authored by an experienced researcher who is one of the leading scholars in this area, this text brings together methodology and theory from phonetics, sociolinguistics, speech production studies and speech perception experiments in a simple, but thorough and engaging format.
There are 12 chapters, varying in length from five to 48 pages. Chapter 1 offers a brief history of sociophonetics as a subfield of linguistics, notes similarities and differences between the methodologies and overarching aims of sociolinguistics and phonetics, and places sociophonetics into context.
Chapter 2 is devoted to discussing issues and methodology of speech production studies, with all relevant acoustic terminology explained in clear, uncomplicated terms. Newer techniques for studying aspects of speech production, such as the use of MRI and ultrasound are included. Different methods of measuring fundamental frequency and vowel formants are presented, and the reliability and robustness of each technique is discussed.
Chapter 3 concentrates on speech perception. There is a detailed and clear explanation of how the human auditory system processes speech sounds, with particular focus on explaining different perceptual scales. The important considerations and major steps to be taken to design a perception experiment are covered, with an excellent discussion comparing different types of stimuli and experiment designs, and explaining ways of altering recordings and synthesising speech.
There follow four chapters, each covering a different phonetic topic: consonants, vowels, prosody and voice quality. The emphasis of each chapter is on explaining the different ways of making measurements, and identifying portions of the speech signal or spectrogram that will help inform researchers’ choices when it comes to choosing what, and how, to measure. Example spectrograms and measurement plots are interspersed throughout all four chapters to aid comprehension and demonstrate visually the steps of method and differences between segments or variables being relayed. Such figures prove to be extremely helpful and informative.
Chapter 4, devoted to consonants, presents ways of recognising and distinguishing different manners and places of articulation on spectrograms, including a thorough discussion of formant transitions. There is a comprehensive discussion of how to measure the variation of different consonantal segments, with the section on fricatives being particularly detailed. The chapter also incorporates ways of studying VOT, glottalisation, voicing, deletion, and the quality of and vocalisation of laterals and rhotics. Although English is the main focus, some examples from other languages are also included.
Chapter 5 concentrates on vowels, beginning with a brief consideration of whether to use casual or read speech for analysis. The different ways and possibilities of measuring vowel duration and vowel formants are covered, and there are lengthy discussions of plotting, presenting and normalising formant measurements. The chapter concludes with a section on analysing undershoot effects, including vowel reduction and coarticulatory assimilation.
Chapter 6 focuses on prosody, and begins with a brief discussion of the analysis of pauses and speech rate. There follows consideration of the different posited ways of measuring tone, lexical stress, stress-timing and rhythm, with the different mathematical formulas involved presented and discussed. Next, there is a section on intonation. Various complications of studying intonational variation are acknowledged, before the ToBI system of transcription, as the current favoured transcription method, is explained and demonstrated. There is also a brief mention of the possible methods for studying declination and pre-boundary lengthening. This chapter is a lot more cross-linguistic in nature than the others, which is understandable given that the content includes discussion of pitch accents, tone languages, and stress- versus syllable-timed languages, for example.
Chapter 7 is devoted to voice quality, an under-explored area in sociolinguistics and phonetics. The multitude of formulas devised to measure different aspects of voice quality is mentioned, and the need for a non-subjective instrumental measurement procedure is argued for. There is a short section dedicated to highlighting what should and should not be measured, and acceptable lengths of utterance to include in an analysis, before various aspects of vowel quality are discussed. As usual, clear illustrations are provided, demonstrating how to distinguish between, measure and compare phonation types from spectra and spectrograms. Other measureable quantities such as jitter and shimmer are presented, as are the effects of various articulatory settings on voice quality. Larynx height, lingual settings, labial settings and nasality are all covered, along with suggestions of how to measure each. The section on quantifying the degree of nasality of a voice is particularly detailed.
The focus of the book then moves from practical and methodological issues to discussing more theoretical matters of sociophonetics. Chapter 8 has as its main argument the need for sociophonetic research to incorporate as full a variety of different types of linguistic variables as possible, in interaction with one another, not just in isolation, in order to get a complete picture of the social meanings indexed by variation and change.
Chapter 9 looks at the role of variation in cognitive processing of speech, an area that Thomas argues is vital for greater understanding of language acquisition and use, and that should be made a priority for future sociophonetic research. There is a lengthy section devoted to Exemplar Theory, explaining the concept, its applications and criticisms of the model, as well as suggestions for ways of testing it.
Chapter 10 is on the subject of sound change, and looks at the different angles that have been taken by phoneticians and sociolinguists in explaining the motivations behind the origins and spread of changes. Two concepts, ‘ease of articulation’ and ‘maximal dispersion’ are explained and critiqued, before phonetic models of sound change are discussed, in particular the views of Ohala (Reference Ohala and Jones1993), Lindblom et al. (Reference Lindblom, Guion, Hura, Moon and Willerman1995) and Blevins (Reference Blevins2004). Labov's (Reference Labov1994) Principles of Vowel Change are explained and evaluated, before a very short discussion on external motivations for change. This topic is extended and talked about in more detail in Chapter 11, which focuses on the interaction between social factors and phonetics. All the best-known sociolinguistic theories and standpoints are covered to some extent, including the concepts of style, register and accommodation, and the notions of speech communities, social networks and communities of practice, and how these models have been used to hypothesise motivations for change. Extensive reference to existing literature is made, highlighting to the reader the seminal studies in each area.
Finally, Chapter 12 is on the subject of lateral transfer, a term Thomas uses to refer to interconnections between different modules of language study. This chapter is a great deal more abstract in nature than the rest of the book, and does not read quite as easily, perhaps because of the relative greater complexity of the theoretical matter it presents. This chapter helps to drive towards new ways of thinking in linguistics, but could have been a little longer to allow greater explanation of the more abstract concepts, and give the reader the same clear level of knowledge and understanding the rest of the book succeeds in providing.
Through the discussions in the theoretical chapters, and arguments in Chapters 1 and 8, Thomas paints a convincing case for regarding sociophonetics as a field in its own right. The overarching argument throughout the text is that variation ought to be analysed holistically, integrating phonetics and sociolinguistics, and their interaction together to inform analyses.
Each chapter concludes with a list of suggested further readings, pointing the reader towards more specialised literature on the subject of the material covered, and questions designed to test readers’ comprehension. These questions could quite easily form the basis of exercises or discussions for seminars or tutorials. Sound files for the exercises, or simply to use independently to help practice the measuring techniques introduced, are available at the accompanying website http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/sociophonetics/.
Unlike the recent Di Paolo & Yaeger-Dror (Reference Di Paolo and Yaeger-Dror2010) book on sociophonetics, the book under review includes no chapter on statistical analysis. Nor is there as much detail on fieldwork methods, using, creating and storing speech corpora, or transcription methodology, each of which Di Paolo & Yaeger-Dror's (2010) text devotes an individual chapter to. These practical topics are thus better covered by Di Paolo & Yaeger-Dror (Reference Di Paolo and Yaeger-Dror2010), although do not go completely unacknowledged by Thomas; for example, there is a summary table of widely-used statistical tests and suggestions of statistics textbooks to read.
The tone of the text is informative and authoritative, without being too dry or dense. The book can appear quite maths-heavy, but this is understandable given the sheer amount of methodology presented, and while there are numerous equations, everything is explained clearly and simply enough to not be too daunting to the reader. Occasionally, the tone gets a little informal, such as urging the reader to be ‘like Goldilocks and choose the one that's just right’ (p. 43) when adjusting LPC (linear predictive coding) coefficients as part of formant-measuring methodology.
Throughout the book, Thomas manages to keep the discussion neutral and impartial. Although measurement techniques are evaluated for their robustness or suitability under certain conditions, there are no real personal viewpoints of whether or not one method is more or less ‘correct’ than any other. Some might see this as a weakness, but the value of presenting the facts and methods of as wide a cross-section as possible, and leaving the reader to form their own judgements and make informed decisions based on the information given, cannot be ignored.
Overall, what makes this text stand out as an excellent resource for sociophonetic research is its thorough handling of each topic, extensive coverage of such a wide range of practical, methodological and theoretical issues, and sheer readability. Thomas continually highlights gaps in existing knowledge, and suggests numerous possible avenues of exploration for budding (or established) sociophoneticians to study in the future. This text would be suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate study, or as a resource for seasoned researchers wanting to gain a knowledge and understanding of the key methodology of sociophonetics, and what – as an autonomous sub-discipline – it has to offer the larger linguistic community.
