Main Takeaways
Valuing and leveraging students’ phonetic experience and competence increases inclusion
Acknowledging individual and dialect variation is an important part of celebrating linguistic diversity as it concerns speech sounds
Discussing the biases within phonetics as a discipline disrupts discriminatory narratives
Quick Wins
Changes you can easily implement to make a difference in your teaching and in the learning and experiences of your students
- Leverage students’ linguistic capital: Acknowledge individual and dialect variation and encourage students to share sounds from the languages and dialects of English that they speak.
- Consider what example sounds communicate: Avoid exoticizing sounds and the languages whose sounds are demonstrated. Make ties between rare sounds and (para)linguistic uses in more familiar languages.
- Explicitly acknowledge linguistic discrimination: In emphasizing the linguistic equality of different language varieties, acknowledge the unequal status of linguistic varieties in society, how this can be reflected in how the sounds in certain varieties are judged, and discuss how this is rooted in factors like racism and classism.
- Explicitly acknowledge exclusionary forces within phonetics: Discuss the fraught relationship between phonetics, the deaf community, and sign language linguistics– and ways of improving; Discuss Eurocentrism within the IPA, its historical reasons, and possible ways forward; Discuss the IPA and its relationship to the ext-IPA for sounds occurring in so-called “disordered” speech.
Bigger Impact
What more can be done to have a long-term, positive impact in your teaching and on your students’ learning and experiences in linguistics?
Suggestion #1: Expose students to sounds of minoritized varieties of English
When discussing varieties of English, have students listen to African-American English and other varieties that are often considered “hard to understand”.
Why?
- These varieties are stigmatized
- Intelligibility is related to listener familiarity, the variety’s influence from other languages, speaker’s linguistic repertoire, and societal biases
How?
- Use recordings from Speech Accent Archive
- Discuss why some accents are harder to perceive (familiarity to accent vs. English as “native” language/L1 for community vs. influence from other languages)
- For example, compare intelligibility of AAE (higher familiarity, lower prestige) vs. RP (lower familiarity, higher prestige)
- For example, compare intelligibility of three varieties with presumed low familiarity among students, e.g. Manchester English (“inner core”, little outside influence, monolingual speakers) vs. Standard Scottish English (“inner core”, Gaelic and Scots influence, monolingual speakers) vs. Indian English (“outer core”, influence of Indian languages, multilingual speakers)
Suggestion #2: Incorporate examples of sounds from Indigenous languages and minority languages of students
When reviewing sounds of the world’s languages (e.g. in introductory phonetics courses), make use of audio recordings of Indigenous languages, especially local ones and ones spoken by students’ families.
Why?
- These varieties are stigmatized, both in US and abroad
- Teaches students about local Indigenous communities, reminds them that these languages continue to be spoken
- Affirms and celebrates the linguistic heritage of students from different backgrounds
How?
- In first week of class, collect information about the languages students speak, and that are spoken in their family (see the Getting to Know Students page for details). Use that information when choosing examples of languages to demonstrate.
- Common heritage languages (with sounds one could demonstrate) include:
- Americas: Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mayan languages (prenasalization, fortis/lenis consonants, phonation, tone, ejectives/implosives); Nahuatl (lateral fricatives and affricates, contrastive length)
- East Asia: Taishanese/Toishanese (tones), Hakka Chinese (tones), Min Chinese (tones), Wu Chinese (tones, phonation), Vietnamese (tones, phonation, implosives)
- Common heritage languages (with sounds one could demonstrate) include:
- Ja’a Kumiai Illustration of the IPA (by UCSD authors!) provides many examples of contrasts:
- Palatalization, dental vs. alveolar, lateral fricatives, etc.
Suggestion #3: Discuss phonetics and sign languages
Review the relationship between phonetics as a discipline and sign languages: the historical ties between phonetics and the deaf community, phonetics of sign languages, and how phonetics and sign language linguistics are mutually informative.
Why?
- Traditional phonetics courses (including LIGN 110 at UCSD) are all about speech. But as a discipline, phonetics has two main paths of study:
- Phonetics is the linguistic study of speech sounds: how speech sounds are articulated and perceived, and used within phonological systems of spoken languages. (This path of study is forcibly limited to sounds of spoken languages.)
- Phonetics is the study of how phonological units are articulated and perceived. (This path of study must also include signs of sign languages.)
- By learning about these two paths, students learn that not all aspects of phonetic study are limited to speech.
- Affirms students’ interest in studying the phonetic properties of sign languages: teaches students that phonetics is relevant for sign languages, and sign languages are relevant for phonetics
How?
- After reviewing the IPA, review current research into phonetic notation of sign languages (SLP Annotator/Analyzer: YouTube video)
- During discussion of suprasegments, have student demo prepared illustrating how intonation-like properties work in ASL vs. English. Compare declarative statement, Y/N question, WH question in both languages, and discuss similarities and differences between use of non-manual markers in ASL and suprasegments in English.
- Consider using LEDIR (University of Toronto) datasets on articulation in several sign languages
- When discussing the history of the IPA, acknowledge the ties between the IPA and Oralism, and how this has contributed to the ongoing split between speech-driven phonetics and sign language research:
- The history of phonetics, of phonetic notation in general, and of the IPA specifically, is closely tied to Oralism and efforts to “alleviate” or even “eradicate” deafness. For examples of this, see in particular links under Weeks 2, 5, and 7 from the LIGN 214: “History of phonetics” course page.
Suggestion #4: Discuss Eurocentrism in the IPA
Review the Eurocentrism inherent to the IPA; discuss the history of why this is the case, and systems of phonetic notation that are less Eurocentric (including pros and cons of the IPA vs. alternatives); also highlight the ways in which the IPA is an alphabet for all spoken languages in spite of these biases.
Why?
- Reminds students that Eurocentric properties of the IPA are based on history, the demographics of researchers and their biases; those Eurocentric properties are not, however, due to any inherent superiority of the Roman alphabet or of European languages.
- By showing other alternatives, students can better understand why the IPA persists as the standard for phonetic notation of speech sounds.
How?
- Discuss where the biases do and do not lie within the IPA, for example:
- General use of symbols based on Roman letters; left-to-right writing orientation; consonants and vowels; similarities between symbols and graphemes in dominant Western European languages like Danish, English, French, and German; presence of unique symbol [ɧ] for double articulation in Swedish (and cf. [w, ʍ], which are found in English vs. other labial-velars that are rare in European languages, and which have no unique symbol); “Other symbols” and placement of alveolar-palatals; absence of fortis/lenis contrast… But also:
- Tone numerals and letters (developed by YR Chao), contemporary issues of learnability, readability, and accessibility.
- A comparison can be made between IPA and other systems of notation, including the “Hangulphabet.” What are the pros and cons of this alternative?
Suggestion #5: Discuss “typical” vs. “disordered” speech sounds
Review of the IPA in comparison to the extIPA.
Why?
- Allows for discussion of similarities and differences of sounds deemed “disordered” vs. not disordered: what counts as a disorder, and for what reasons is treatment solicited?
- Allows students to better understand why certain sounds not in the IPA, if they exist in speech patterns of individuals; in other words, they can better understand the goals of the IPA
- Knowledge of extIPA is useful for students interested in pursuing speech-language pathology
How?
- Discuss what counts as a disorder, and why; what is targeted in speech therapy, and what is not
- Discuss why there is both an IPA and extIPA – why keep the charts separate?
Resources
World Englishes (3rd ed.). Melchers, Gunnel, Philip Shaw, Peter Sundkvist. 2019. London: Routledge.
Illustrations of the IPA – interactive language map with links to particular papers and accompanying sound files
A course in phonetics – sound files accompanying Johnson & Ladefoged textbook; files from Ladefoged’s fifth edition here
SLP-AA Initial Demonstration. Hall, Kathleen Currie.
Ext-IPA consonants with labels. Setter, Jane.
Sex, gender, and variability of the vocal tract. LEDIR (University of Toronto).