Speech rate, pause and sociolinguistic variation : studies in corpus sociophonetics / Tyler Kendall, University of Oregon, USA.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Kendall, Tyler, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Phonology.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Sociolinguistics.

Dialectology--Research.

Dialectology.

English language--Variation.

English language.

Linguistic change.

Physical Description:

xv, 247 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

Speech Rate, Pause, and Sociolinguistic Variation examines the confluence of sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors in linguistic variation through a series of corpus-based analyses of speech rate and silent pause in US English. It first presents a comprehensive review of the literature on speech rate and pause and then examines a large collection of new data drawn from a range of sociolinguistic interview recordings. Exploring variability in speech timing, the book demonstrates that speakers' and utterances' speech rates pattern with a number of social factors (such as regional origin and sex) while pause durations are less influenced by these factors. Then, through the development of new quantitative techniques, it mobilizes variability in speech timing to help understand the production of more traditional sociolinguistic variables, finding that the realization of the variable (ing), the alternation between forms like "talking" and "talkin"', is significantly related to speakers' pausing patterns. With detailed discussions of its data and methods and with supporting tools and data on an accompanying website, Speech Rate, Pause, and Sociolinguistic Variation is also a valuable resource for conducting one's own corpus sociophonetic research. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Speech Rate, Pause, and Corpus Sociophonetics

1 Looking Forward 3

1.1 Introduction 3

1.2 Disciplinarity and intersections 5

1.3 Why exactly speech rate and pause? 8

1.4 Overview of the monograph 10

2 What We Know about Speech Rate and Pause 12

2.1 Introduction 12

2.2 Attitudes towards and the perception of speech rate and pause 14

2.3 Pauses in detail 20

2.4 Speech rates in detail 26

2.5 Motivating further study 35

3 New Tools and Speech Databases 37

3.1 Introduction 37

3.2 The Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project (SLAAP) 38

3.3 SLAAP's transcript model 40

3.4 The Online Speech/Corpora Archive and Analysis Resource 44

3.5 Tools for the analysis of temporal speech features 45

Part II Studies in Speech Rate and Pause Variation

4 Methods and a First Look at Speech Rate and Pause 51

4.1 Introduction 51

4.2 Modeling sociophonetic data 52

4.3 The reading passage data 56

4.4 Measuring and defining rate of speech and pause 58

4.4.1 Rate of speech 58

4.4.2 Pause durations 63

4.5 Reading passage data and analysis 64

4.5.1 Rate of speech in the reading passage data and its statistical analysis 66

4.5.2 Pauses in the reading passage data 79

4.6 From investigating read data to conversational speech data 80

5 Speech Rate and Pause in Conversational Interviews 83

5.1 Introduction 83

5.2 The data 84

5.3 Modeling speech rate and pause durations at the measurement level 89

5.3.1 Speech rate at the utterance level 90

5.3.2 Pause duration at the pause level 97

5.4 Modeling speech rate and pause durations at the speaker level 101

5.4.1 Speech rate at the speaker level 102

5.4.2 Pause duration at the speaker level 109

5.5 Which approach is better? 115

5.6 The sociolinguistic patterns of speech rate and pause duration 117

6 Closer Looks at Speech Rate and Pause Variation: Methods and Findings 121

6.1 Introduction 121

6.2 How many speech rate measurements yield stable patterns? 122

6.2.1 The stability of central tendencies 123

6.2.2 Measurement size and the stability of the statistical models 125

6.2.3 Making sense of conflicting results 129

6.3 How long is a pause? (An experiment in modeling) 130

6.4 Articulation rates in Intonational Phrases and the effect of phrase-final lengthening 138

6.5 Pause duration variability as a function of pause type 148

6.6 Summing up 156

7 Closer Looks at Speech Rate and Pause Variation: Interlocutors and Accommodation 158

7.1 Introduction 158

7.2 Interlocutor effects on speech rate and pause 159

7.3 Accommodation in pauses and speech rates 167

7.3.1 A case study: who is interviewing EH? 167

7.3.2 A case study: C is interviewing whom? 170

7.4 Summing up 176

Part III Speech Rate, Pause, and Sociolinguistic Variation

8 The Influence of Speech Rate and Pause on Sociolinguistic Variables 181

8.1 Introduction 181

8.2 The sociolinguistics of style 184

8.3 The psycholinguistics of style 186

8.4 Channel cues to attention to speech 188

8.5 The Henderson graph: a method for quantifying attention to speech 190

8.5.1 A new methodology for Henderson graphing 193

8.5.2 Henderson graph-based metrics 196

8.6 Case study: the interviews with adolescent African American girls in Washington, DC 197

8.6.1 Henderson graph slopes and sequential temporal variation 197

8.6.2 Hesitancy in narrative versus nonnarrative talk 199

8.6.3 Attention to speech and variable (ing) 200

8.6.4 Channel cues in the DC interviews 206

8.7 Conclusion 206

9 Looking Back and Looking Further Forward 210

9.1 Taking stock 210.

Notes:

Revision of the author's thesis.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230249776

0230249779

OCLC:

798059548