Sociophonology

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The branch of linguistics that examines how a speaker's social class, age, region or group identity influences the sounds they produce
2. The field concerned with the way social background and community membership affect pronunciation patterns and sound systems within a language
3. Study of the relationship between social structure and the phonological variation found in speech across different groups of people

Etymology: "Sociophonology" is a plain compound built from "socio-", a combining form drawn from Latin "socius" meaning "companion" or "ally," and "phonology," the study of the sound systems of language. Phonology itself comes from Greek "phōnē," meaning "voice" or "sound," joined to "-logia," the suffix for a field of study. Put together, the word names the study of sound patterns as they are shaped by social life. The construction shows its logic openly: "socio-" has been attached to many English words to mean "social" or "relating to society," as in "sociolinguistics" and "sociology." The combination describes a specialist branch that sits at the crossroads of linguistics and the social sciences, asking how the sounds a person makes reflect where they come from, how old they are, or which groups they belong to.

Synonyms: sociophonetics