Trends in Phonetics and Phonology

This volume was inspired by the 9th edition of the Phonetik and Phonologie conference, held in Zürich in October 2013. It includes state of the art research on phonetics and phonology in various languages and from interdisciplinary contributors. The volume is structured into the following eight sections: segmentals, suprasegmentals, articulation in spoken and sign language, perception, phonology, crowdsourcing phonetic data, second language speech, and arts (with inevitable overlap between these areas).

Internet-mediated Phonetics

Facebook is a medium of social interaction producing its own style. The present study analyses how users from Malaga create this style through phonetic features of the local Spanish variety and how they reflect on the use of these features. Moreover, the use of non-standard variants by users from Malaga is examined and compared to an oral corpus. Results demonstrate that social factors work differently in real and virtual speech. Thus, the electronic medium constrains the phonetics of the local variety employed on Facebook. Facebook communication is seen as a style serving to create social meaning and to express linguistic identity.