Acoustic and Pragmatic Aspects of Speech

Dear Colleagues, 

This Special Issue, “Acoustic and Pragmatic Aspects of Speech” invites contributions that explore the intricate relationship between the acoustic properties of speech and their pragmatic interpretation and linguistic function. We seek work that uses acoustic evidence to illuminate how speakers encode meaning, intention, information structure, and interactional goals, as well as how listeners interpret these cues in real communicative settings. Suitable topics include prosody and pragmatics, intonation and discourse structure, speaker intent, sociolinguistic variation (e.g. gender, dialect, identity), emotional expression, segmental and suprasegmental correlates of pragmatic functions, cross-linguistic and developmental perspectives, and acoustically grounded analyses of spoken language use. Submissions may employ experimental, corpus-based, or analytical approaches, but should remain accessible to a broad audience of phoneticians, linguists, and speech scientists, avoiding narrowly engineering-focused or highly technical signal-processing work. The aim of this Special Issue is to foster dialogue between disciplines: we wish to bridge the gap between linguistic theory and speech acoustics, highlighting how acoustic evidence informs our understanding of language in real-world contexts and deepens our understanding of pragmatic meaning in spoken interaction.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution to the Guest Editor (noama@tauex.tau.ac.il) or to the Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring their proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue, and full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Prof. Dr. Noam Amir
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• prosody
• pragmatics
• intonation
• discourse structure
• speaker intent
• sociolinguistic variation
• emotional expression