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Despite its concentration on sound, phonetics is a diverse field with a multidisciplinary reach—so much so that you will have to read this entire book to get a good picture of its scope. To begin, let's consider its three core branches, as shown in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3 Core branches of phonetics

Articulatory phonetics covers the anatomy and physiology of speech, with a focus on the structures we use to generate vocal sounds, such as the tongue, lips, nose, and larynx, and on the ways in which these anatomical components function together. An understanding of normal articulation is essential for helping people with speech disorders, who may need the assistance of a speech–language pathologist. A child who has undergone surgery for a cleft palate, for instance, may experience production difficulties that can be remedied by a speech professional. The domain of auditory phonetics is the structures and processes through which the human auditory system decodes the speech stream into meaningful messages. Numerous insights into child language acquisition have been gained because of perceptual research within this branch of the field. Finally, acoustic phonetics addresses the physical properties of the speech sounds themselves, often through analyses like the ones depicted in Figure 1.2. Thanks to acoustic‐phonetic research, we are able to synthesize the intelligible, natural‐sounding speech now available on computers, phones, and other household devices.

It will help you to remember the core areas of phonetics if you think of them as the three As: Articulatory, Auditory, and Acoustic.

Though the core branches provide us with one way of appreciating the nature of the field, another set of descriptors can be used to characterize phoneticians' approaches to their work. Historically, phonetics has relied extensively on the trained human ear, and even today, careful listening and skillful transcription are fundamental to IMPRESSIONISTIC phonetics. Some highly skilled phoneticians have played a key role in criminal cases by providing ear‐based analyses of threatening phone calls. However, thanks to the technological advances of the twentieth century, INSTRUMENTAL phonetics has taken a more prominent role than ever before. It involves the use of a variety of sophisticated tools for imaging the vocal tract during speech and for pinpointing important acoustic details. A third approach, the most recently developed, which we will refer to as AUTOMATIC SPEECH PROCESSING, uses artificial intelligence ( AI ) for a variety of purposes, including computer recognition of speech, forensic voice identification, and speech synthesis.

Finally, APPLIED phonetics, which is heavily emphasized throughout this book, is concerned with the ways in which our understanding of speech can be used to achieve practical ends. Strictly speaking, applied phonetics is not separate from any of the types we've mentioned already. In fact, it makes use of research findings from all three core branches and can be approached impressionistically, instrumentally, and through AI. One of the first applications of phonetics to come to mind for most people is language teaching. In fact, the speech sciences have been powerfully influenced by ideas about spoken language instruction, as we'll see in Chapter 11. However, there are many other sub‐branches of applied work, including forensic phonetics and clinical phonetics, as well as specialized areas of application relating to accessibility, automation, music, animation, stage and screen acting, and business.