Chapter 16
Aspects of the Acoustic Analysis of Imitation
Betsy E. Evans, University of Washington
- Introduction
This chapter explores the analysis of imitation, an area of sociolinguistic
research that has received little attention, largely due to an assumption that
speakers can “perform” only gross stereotypical characteristics of other vari-
eties. However, results from the study of imitation in other sub¿ elds of lin-
guistics, especially forensic linguistics, indicate that sociolinguists should
consider imitation more seriously. An exploration of existing acoustic research
on imitation will be presented in order to establish the current state of this
kind of research and target future directions this ¿ eld could take.
Firstly, it is useful to clarify here what is meant by imitation. For the
purposes of this chapter, imitation refers to the conscious use of a variety that
is not the speaker’s usual vernacular. Some might call such speech activities
“performance,” “style,” “imitation,” or even “metaphoric shift.” This dif¿ -
culty in de¿ ning what imitation is probably contributes to imitation not being
taken seriously as a topic of research. In addition, de¿ nitions of imitation
often suit the purpose of the research. However, more importantly, imita-
tion has received little attention from sociolinguists due to the prominence
in sociolinguistics of the “vernacular principle” (Labov 1972: 112). Much
time and effort have been devoted to developing methods of data collection/
interviewing that avoid the observer’s paradox so that we can study the “ver-
nacular” (see Milroy and Gordon 2003). Clearly, imitation is a case in which
the speaker is paying a great deal of attention to his/her speech, thus leading
researchers to set imitation aside.
In addition, for many years, linguists have assumed that it is not possible
for a speaker to modify his/her speech in a systematic way. Labov (1972: 215)
has stated that he doubts if a speaker can master more than one dialect:
Although one can achieve a certain amount of insight working with bilingual
informants, it is doubtful if as much can be said for “bidialectal” informants,
if indeed such speakers exist. We have not encountered any nonstandard