1. Phonetics and phonology

Sociophonetics studies the ways in which pronunciation interacts with society. It is the study of the way in which phonetic structures change in response to different social functions and the deviations of what these functions are. Here there are innumerable facts to be discovered, even about a language as well investigated as English, concerning, for instance, the nature, of the different kinds of English pronunciation we use in different situations – when we are talking to equals, superiors or subordinates; when we are “on the job”, when we are old or young; male or female; when we are trying to persuade, inform, agree or disagree and so on. We may hope that very soon sociophonetics may supply elementary information about: “who can say, what, how, using what phonetic means, to whom, when, and why?” In teaching phonetics we would consider the study of sociolinguistics to be an essential part of the explanation in the functional area of phonetic units.
Psycholinguistics as a distinct area of interest developed in the early sixties, and in its early form covered the psychological implications of an extremely broad area, from acoustic phonetics to language pathology. Nowadays no one would want to deny the existence of strong mutual bonds of interest operating between linguistics, phonetics in our case and psychology. The acquisition of language by children, the extent to which language mediates or structures thinking; the extent to which language is influenced and itself influences such things as memory, attention, recall and constraints on perception; and the extent to which language has a certain role to play in the understanding of human development; the problems of speech production are broad illustrations of such bounds.
It is its application to linguistic phenomena that makes phonetics a social science in the proper sense of the word, notwithstanding its increasing need of technical methods, and in spite of its practical applications.

3. 
   5. Methods of Phonetic Analysis
   

Methods applied in investigating the sound matter of the language have changed greatly with the development of technology and computer science. From the beginning of phonetics the phonetician has relied mainly on what he could feel of his own speech and on what he could hear both of his own and the informant’s speech. Such methods are called direct and consist in observing the movements and positions of one's own or other people's organs of speech in pronouncing various speech sounds, as well as in analysing one's own kinaesthetic sensations (muscle tense) during the articulation of speech sounds and in comparing them with the resultant auditory impressions. Investigation by means of this method can be effective only if the persons employing it have been specially trained and have acquired considerable skills in associating the qualities of the perceived sound with the nature of the articulations producing it.
Instrumental methods were introduced into phonetics in the last century to supplement the impressions deriving from the human senses. These methods are based upon registering or computing machines and technical devices, such as spectrograph, intonograph, x-ray photography and cinematography, laryngoscope and some others. The introduction of machines for measurements and for instrumental analysis into phonetics has resulted in their use for detailed study of many of the phenomena which are present in the sound wave or in the articulatory process at any given moment. These techniques can be very useful both for discovering in detail how English speakers produce their speech sounds, and for demonstrating to learners of English their pronunciation. Computers can provide additional pronunciation training, displaying useful information on the screen and being a powerful visual aid for effective phonetic practice. One more advantage of the modern experimental study of speech is the enormous amount of varied spoken speech data stored on computers. It facilitates the process of looking for cross-language differences and similarities. The data obtained from instrumental analysis supplement and verify those obtained by means of direct observation, thus making the research results more detailed and precise.
1) Sounds and spelling:
There are 26 letters in the English alphabet but there are 44 sounds in the English language. This means that the number of sounds in a word is not always the same as the number of letters.
The word ‘CAT’ has three letters and three sounds but the word ‘CATCH’ has five letters but still only three sounds. If we write these words using phonemic symbols, we can see exactly how many sounds they have.
CAT is written /k æ t/
CATCH is written /k æ ʧ/
In ‘CATCH’ the three letters TCH are one sound represented by one phonemic symbol /ʧ/
The number of letters and the number of sounds is always different in these words.

horse	through	judge	enough	sugar
caught	island	daughter	knowledge	cupboard
cow	know	business	singing	more
carrot	chemist	treasure	thinking	laugh
heart	singer	thorough	door	check

Recommended literature:

1. 
   Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П. и др. Практическая фонетика английского языка. М.: Высшая школа, 1997. – 384 с.
   
2. 
   Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Тихонова И.С., Тихонова Р.М. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка. М.: Высшая школа, 1997. – 384 с.
   
3. 
   Шевченко Т.И. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка. М.: Высшая школа, 2006. – 191 с.