A Phonological and Sociolinguistic Analysis of Some Utterances Produced by Professional People in Ramadi City

Abstract

A present study is an attempt to analyze the speech of eight persons working in different professions in Ramadi city and the surrounding rural areas. They are an Imam of the mosque, a teacher, a physician, a taxi- driver, a grocer, a farmer, a worker, and a butcher. The speech of those people is analyzed phonologically in terms of voice quality and the level of pitch, while sociolinguistically in terms of style of speech being formal, or informal; or polite or impolite. The voice quality helps in deciding the speaker’s identity of being rural or urban; snooty or nice because the voice quality may be harsh, cheery, creaky, coarse, etc. Thus, the fact that the voice quality of the speaker reveals his identity has been proved. Studying the characteristics of voice quality and the pitch of the voice leads to knowing the speaker’s speech as formal or informal, polite or impolite. This gives us a clear evidence that there is a symmetric relation between phonetics-phonology and sociolinguistics as far as the speech is concerned.