Sociophonetics

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The branch of linguistics examining how a speaker's social background, class, region or identity influences the pronunciation of sounds
2. The field that investigates the link between social groups and the phonetic details of how people actually speak
3. Study of the way speech sounds vary according to social characteristics such as age, ethnicity, gender or community membership

Etymology: Sociophonetics is a compound built from two parts. The first, "socio-", comes from Latin "socius," meaning companion or ally, and in modern English it signals a link to society. The second, "phonetics," comes from Greek "phōnētikos," relating to speech sounds. Put together, the term names the study of how speech sounds vary and change in relation to social factors such as class, region, age, gender, and ethnicity. The word is a plain technical coinage rather than an old term with a dramatic history. Its meaning comes directly from the sum of its parts: "phonetics" is the study of speech sounds, and the "socio-" prefix narrows the focus to how those sounds reflect the speaker's place in a community. The field grew out of sociolinguistics, the wider study of language and society, and researchers use it to examine things like how a speaker's accent signals group membership or how a sound shifts across generations within one city.