Purpose

As with the previous SocioPhonAus events in 2016 and 2018, the aim of this Workshop is to enable the growing community of researchers undertaking work on sociophonetic properties of varieties of English spoken in Australia to share findings, to discuss methodological issues, and to debate the theoretical implications of their work.

Thwarted in 2020 and 2021 by the pandemic-related factors that we’re all far too familiar with, conditions this year are looking set fair for a face-to-face Workshop in July. We are therefore planning on that basis, and this announcement is to invite submission of abstracts for papers to be presented at the Workshop.

The focus for SocioPhonAus remains unchanged. Our understanding of the nature of sociophonetic variability in Australian English has evolved rapidly over the last decade, not least with the creation of state-of-the-art new speech corpora (such as AusTalk, Sydney Speaks), a diversity of new approaches to quantitative analysis and modelling, and the activities of the ARC Centre for Excellence for the Dynamics of Language which has created exciting opportunities to investigate the phonetic characteristics of new and evolving varieties of English from across the continent; e.g., contact varieties from the Northern Territory, Aboriginal Englishes spoken in Victoria as a first language, and innovative urban varieties emerging from the complex ethnic compositions of Australian cities. Developments such as these have created a new frame of reference within which to consider the phonetic and phonological characteristics of the varieties of English in Australia, and the rich and complex dimensions of sound pattern variation within and across the nation’s speech communities.

While the focus of the workshop is on varieties of English in Australia, as at the previous workshops there will also be opportunities to hear about sociophonetic research undertaken on varieties of English in New Zealand, highlighting in particular the strong methodological and theoretical parallels between the work carried out on either side of the Tasman, and the divergent paths taken by phonological innovation and change across the two locations. Contributions to the workshop are therefore particularly encouraged from researchers working on sociophonetic variability in NZE.

The Workshop will be organised as a single strand of oral presentations covering various aspects of work on sociophonetic variability including new findings, new corpora, methodological challenges and theoretical implications.

It is expected that the topics to be covered will include (inter alia):

• accent variation as a function of location, age, gender, SES, and/or speech style

• the role of ethnicity as a factor in determining phonological patterning and

• how it can be operationalized for sociophonetic research within an Australian context

• static vs dynamic approaches to capturing variability

• listener processing of sociophonetic variability

• the extent of social marking carried by prosodic features

• discussion of the trajectories of phonological change

• forensic and clinical applications of sociophonetic research in Aus/NZ

• emerging tools and methods for quantitative analysis and modelling