Title: Social Meaning and Consonantal Variation in French and Romance

Abstract: In our forthcoming chapter “Sociophonetics”, Justin Davidson (UC Berkeley) and I take a bird’s-eye view of socially relevant phonetic variation across some varieties of the Romance languages. In this seminar, I will go beyond methodological considerations of social meaning in speech (e.g., first-, second-, and third-wave studies, etc.) and discuss social indexicality more broadly as affect, status, and conventionalized discursive practices in society. Cases of local hypo- and hyper-articulation (‘strengthening’ and ‘weakening’) in consonants, presented in our chapter, will be used as examples in my introductory presentation and as input for discussions with the audience.    

Participants are asked to read in advance of the seminar the chapter that she and Justin have co-authored. Please email Mairi McLaughlin (mclaughlin@berkeley.edu) for a copy of the chapter.