John Local, BA,

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

(

University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick univer ...

) (born 1947), is a British

phonetician Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

and Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at the

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

. He was one of the creators of the experimental Yorktalk non-segmental speech synthesis system (original computational implementation was by John Coleman) which employed techniques of Firthian Prosodic Analysis (FPA), an approach to phonology developed by J.R. Firth and members of the London School of linguistics. His book ''Doing Phonology'' written with

John Kelly John or Jack Kelly may refer to: People Academics and scientists * John Kelly (engineer), Irish professor, former Registrar of University College Dublin *John Kelly (scholar) (1750–1809), at Douglas, Isle of Man *John Forrest Kelly (1859–1922) ...

provides a radical contemporary take on FPA. Arising out of work which combined detailed phonetic analysis and

Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with ...

(French and Local 1983) his recent research has explored the interactional functioning of phonetic detail and phonetic variation in talk-in-interaction (Local and Walker 2005). According to Ford and Couper-Kuhlen (2004), Local's work 'has been seminal in founding a phonology for conversation. ... his studies have revealed dimensions of patterned sound production in talk-in-interaction hitherto unfathomed' (2004:13).

References

* Ford, Cecilia and Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (2004) ''Sound Patterns in Interaction''. John Benjamins Publishing Company. * French, Peter and Local, John (1983) Turn-competitive incomings. ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 7. 17–38. * Kelly, John and Local, John (1989) ''Doing Phonology: observing, recording, interpreting''. Manchester University Press. * Local, John and Walker, Gareth (2005) Methodological imperatives for investigating the phonetic organisation and phonological structures of spontaneous speech. ''Phonetica'' 62. 120–130.

External links

John Local's homepage

John Local's staff page

Gareth Walker's homepage

John Coleman's homepage
1947 births Living people Linguists from the United Kingdom Linguists from England Phoneticians {{UK-linguist-stub