Professor Gerry Docherty

Professor of Phonetics

Email: g.j.docherty@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 5844
Fax: +44 (0) 191 208 6518

Background

Roles and Responsibilities

Professor of Phonetics

Research

Research Interests

A common strand through all of my research work has been a focus on quantitative acoustic analysis of aspects of speech with a view to enhancing understanding of the nature of phonetic variability and its implications for phonetic theory. In particular, I am interested in determining how the phonetic performance of speakers is shaped by the various dimensions (physical, linguistic, cognitive and social) of spoken communication, with a view to developing theories which account for the systematic properties of speech in its social context. While much of my work has been focused on normal adult speakers, it is also the case that important theoretical insights can be achieved by investigation of the acquisition of speech sound patterning in children and by studying the nature of speech in populations of speakers with impaired speech production, and both of these areas have also had a significant presence in my research activity over the years.

Current Work

I have a number of projects under way or recently completed:

- Ineke Mennen , Felix Schaeffler, and I have recently completed a a project entitled “Cross-language differences in pitch range” funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council. More details can be found on the project website. Our write-up of the results of this project has been published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and we're preparing a follow-up grant application.

- Christian Langstrof, Paul Foulkes and I have developed a line of experimental work on the perceptual evaluation of sociophonetic variability (reported in our paper at the March 2008 BAAP Colloquium in Sheffield and in a poster at the July 2008 Labphon meeting in Wellington, NZ). We presented a paper on this work at the "Production, Perception, Attitude" Workshop which took place in Leuven (2-3 April 2009), and we have a write-up of this work accepted for publication in Linguistics.

- I'm working with Dom Watt and Carmen Llamas on a project entitled "Linguistic variation and national identities on the Scottish/English border". This project kicked off in January '08 and was funded by ESRC for three years. More details can be found on the project website. I've recently presented some of the results of this project at conferences in Barcelona, Pisa, Chester, Freiburg, and Bolzano. We're in the process of writing papers on the findings of this project.

- In 2006 I had an all-too-short two-month visit to the Linguistics Department at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand where (as an Erskine Fellow) I worked with and learned a lot from the staff and students based there who are working on sociophonetic variation in NZ English. I was back in Christchurch towards the end of 2010 for a short visit to take part in the NZILBB Launch Workshop.

- Over recent months, I've been working with Celeste Rodriguez Louro and a great group of students at the University of Western Australia setting out to track trajectories of phonological variation and change in the English spoken within metropolitan Perth. Initial fieldwork has been carried out, and the analysis of material obtained to date is under way.

- I'm currently working with Cathi Best, Jen Hay, Bronwen Evans, Jason Shaw, Jalal Al-Tamimi and Paul Foulkes on an ARC-funded Discovery Project entitled "You came TO DIE?! Perceptual adaptation to regional accents as a new lens on the puzzle of spoken word recognition" (2012-15). The north of England branch of this project is about to begin recording participants speakers from Newcastle and York. The project is based at the MARCS Institute at UWS where I'll be visiting in December prior to a full project meeting at NZILBB in early January.

With my colleagues Ghada Khattab, Isa Buchstaller and Karen Corrigan, I was co-organiser of the 2009 UK Language Variation & Change Conference which we hosted here in Newcastle in September 2009.

Research Roles

From 1999-2007 I was Editor of the Journal of Phonetics, and I am currently an Advisory Editor.

Postgraduate Supervision

I'd be happy to supervise doctoral projects in sociophonetics, descriptive and theoretical phonetics and clinical phonetics.

I currently supervise the following graduate students:
Alison Tickle,
Isao Hara.

My former graduate students are

Anja Lowit-Leuschel,
Fernando Jarabo-Lorenzo,
Paul Carding,
Dom Watt,
Shahidi Hamid,
Mirjana Sokolovic-Perovic,
Aslyn Wan,
John Atkinson.

Publications

Docherty GJ, Foulkes P. Glottal variants of /t/ in the Tyneside variety of english. In: William J. Hardcastle, Janet Mackenzie Beck, ed. A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver. New York: Routledge, 2014, pp.173-200.
Docherty GJ, Langstrof C, Foulkes P. Listener evaluation of sociophonetic variability: Probing constraints and capabilities. Linguistics 2013, 51(2), 355-380.
Mennen I, Schaeffler F, Docherty GJ. Cross-language differences in fundamental frequency range: A comparison of English and German. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2012, 131(3), 2249-2260.
Docherty GJ, Mendoza-Denton N. Speaker-related variation - sociophonetic factors. In: Cohn, A., Fougeron, C., Huffman, M, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Laboratory Phonology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp.44-60.
Docherty GJ, Watt DJL, Llamas C, Hall DJ, Nycz J. Variation in Voice Onset Time along the Scottish-English Border. In: 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2011, Hong Kong.
Foulkes P, Docherty GJ, Jones MJ. Analysing stops. In: Di Paolo,M;Yaeger-Dror,M, ed. Sociophonetics: a student’s guide. London: Routledge, 2010, pp.58-71.
Docherty GJ. Phonological innovation in contemporary spoken British English. In: Kirkpatrick, A, ed. The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London: Routledge, 2010, pp.59-75.
Foulkes P, Docherty GJ, Khattab G, Yaeger-Dror M. Sound Judgments: Perception of Indexical Features in Children's Speech. In: Preston, D., Niedzielski, N, ed. A Reader in Sociophonetics. New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010, pp.327-356.
Docherty GJ, Khattab G. Sociophonetics and Clinical Linguistics. In: Ball, M., Perkins, M., Müller, N., Howard, S, ed. The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008, pp.603-625.
Foulkes P, Docherty GJ. Phonological variation in the English of England. In: Britain, D, ed. Language in the British Isles. London: Arnold, 2007, pp.52-74.
Docherty GJ. Prosodic factors and sociophonetic variation: Speech rate and glottal variants in Tyneside English. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2007, Saarbruecken.
Docherty GJ. Speech in its natural habitat: accounting for social factors in phonetic variability. In: Ignacio Hualde, J; Cole, J, ed. Laboratory Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, pp.1-35.
Docherty GJ, Foulkes P, Tillotson J, Watt DJL. On the scope of phonological learning : issues arising from socially-structured variation. In: Goldstein, L., Whalen, D.H., Best, C.T, ed. Laboratory Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, pp.393-421.
Foulkes P, Docherty G. The social life of phonetics and phonology. Journal of Phonetics 2006, 34(4), 409-438.
Foulkes P, Docherty G, Watt D. Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language 2005, 81(1), 177-206.
Docherty GJ. Commentary on papers by Remez, Goldinger/Azuma and Local. Journal of Phonetics 2003, 31(3-4), 341-344.
Watt D, Docherty GJ, Foulkes P. First accent acquisition: a study of phonetic variation in child directed speech. In: 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2003, Barcelona, Spain.
Docherty GJ. On the interpretation of speakers' performance: Commentary on papers by Zawaydeh, Silverman, Hayward et al., and Tajima & Port. In: Local, J., Ogden, R., Temple, R, ed. Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp.335-349.
Docherty GJ. Speaker, community, identity: empirical and theoretical perspectives on sociophonetic variation. In: 15th International Congress of Phonetics Sciences. 2003, Barcelona, Spain.
Docherty GJ, Watt DJL. Chain-shifts. In: Mesthrie, R, ed. Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam; New York: Pergamon, 2002, pp.303-306.
Docherty GJ, Foulkes P. Variability in (r) production: instrumental perspectives. In: Van de Velde, H., van Hout, R, ed. r-atics: Sociolinguistic, Phonetic and Phonological Characteristics of /r/. Brussels: ILVP, 2002, pp.173-184.
Foulkes P, Docherty GJ. Variation and change in British English (r). In: Van de Velde, H., van Hout, R, ed. r-atics: Sociolinguistic, Phonetic and Phonological Characteristics of /r/. Brussels: ILVP, 2002, pp.27-43.
Lowit-Leuschel A, Docherty GJ. Prosodic variation across sampling tasks in normal and dysarthric speakers. Logopedics, Phoniatrics, Vocology 2001, 26(4), 151-164.
Docherty GJ, Foulkes P. Another chapter in the story of labiodental variants in British English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 2000, 4(1), 30-59.
Docherty GJ, Foulkes P. Speaker, speech, and knowledge of sounds. In: Burton-Roberts, N., Carr, P., Docherty G, ed. Phonological knowledge: conceptual and empirical issues. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp.105-129.
Docherty GJ, Foulkes P. Instrumental phonetics and phonological variation: case studies from Newcastle upon Tyne and Derby. In: Foulkes P; Docherty G, ed. Urban Voices: accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold, 1999, pp.47-71.
Docherty GJ, Foulkes P , Milroy L , Milroy J . Descriptive adequacy in phonology: a variationist perspective. . Journal of Linguistics , 33 275-310 1997.