Profile

Biography

I was appointed Lecturer in Forensic Speech Science in 2007, and teach mainly on our new MSc programme in that subject. I have an MA (Hons) from Edinburgh and a PhD from Newcastle, and have held teaching and research positions in phonetics, speech acoustics and audiology, phonology and sociolinguistics at universities in Germany and around the UK, including York (2000-2002) and Aberdeen, where I was Director of the Phonetics Laboratory for five years.

Career

• University of Edinburgh
  MA in Linguistics (Honours) (1987 - 1992)
• Universität Flensburg (Germany)
  Lektor, Englisches Seminar (1992 - 1993)
• University of Edinburgh
  Part-time lecturer/tutor, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (1993 - 1994)
• University of Newcastle
  PhD: Variation and Change in the Vowel System of Tyneside English (1994 - 1998)
• University of Leeds
  Research fellow, Department of Linguistics & Phonetics (1998 - 2000)
• University of York 
  Lecturer (2000 - 2002)
• University of Aberdeen
  Lecturer, School of Language and Literature
  Director, Phonetics Laboratory, School of Language and Literature (2002 - 2007)
• University of York 
  Senior lecturer, Forensic speech science (2007 - )

Research

Overview

• Phonetics
• Forensic phonetics
• Language variation and change

I have published over thirty articles on phonetics, sociolinguistics and language variation and change, am co-author with Arthur Hughes and Peter Trudgill of English Accents and Dialects (Hodder, 2005), and co-editor (with Carmen Llamas) of Language and Identities (EUP, forthcoming 2009). I am principal investigator on a 3-year ESRC-funded project Linguistic variation and national identities on the Scottish/English border (AISEB; RES-062-23-0525; £481,843; co-investigators Carmen Llamas and Gerry Docherty) and have research interests in forensic phonetics and acoustics, sociophonetics, first language acquisition, and language variation and change. I also undertake casework involving forensic speech analysis on behalf of JP French Associates.

Publications

Full publications list

For a full list of publications, see Dominic Watt's webpage.

External activities

Memberships

• International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics
  Member, research committee
• International Phonetic Association  
  Member
• British Association of Academic Phoneticians 
  Member
• Linguistics Association of Great Britain 
  Member

Editorial duties

• International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law
  Member, editorial board

Invited talks and conferences

Conferences

For a full list of conference papers, see Dominic's personal website.

• 7th UK Language Variation and Change Conference (UKLVC7) 
  Rethinking the role of speaker agency. Keynote address, September 2009, Newcastle upon Tyne.
• Acoustics ‘08
  A new speaker-intrinsic vowel formant frequency normalization algorithm for sociophonetics. Invited panellist, June/July 2008, Paris (with Anne Fabricius and Daniel Ezra Johnson)
• TechFest (Festival of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) 2006
  Uses and abuses of forensic voice analysis. September 2006, Aberdeen. 
• The Practical Side of Phonetics and Phonology: a Hands-On Science Colloquium
  Forensic Phonetics, July 2005, University of Rostock, Germany.

Invited talks

• University of East Anglia
  'Myths and misconceptions': why clinicians and sociolinguists should talk more shop. February 2010.
• University of York
  Effects of face-concealing garments on speech acoustics and perception. February 2010, Department of Psychology (with Carmen Llamas).
• University of Cambridge
  Accent of birth? Linking phonological variation to attitudes and identities on the Scottish/English border. January 2010.
• York St. John University
  Among the most meaningful of sounds: identities, attitudes and /r/ on the Scottish-English border. November 2009.
• Lancaster University
  Talking of crime: the work of the forensic speech analyst. January 2008.
• University of Leeds
  Mr. Straw and the constituent's veil: some initial observations of the effects of different face coverings on speech acoustics and intelligibility. January 2008.
  Also given at University of Newcastle, November 2007; with Carmen Llamas.
• University College Dublin
  Resolving the content of disputed utterances in forensic speech analysis. November 2007.
• University of Rostock
  Scottish English and changes in Scottish identity since 1997. July 2005, Germany.
• University of Newcastle
  England fans with 'Scottish' accents: on the role of phonological variables as identity markers in Berwick upon Tweed. March 2004.
• Queen Margaret University
  First accent acquisition: a study of phonetic variation in child-directed speech. May 2003.
• University of Essex
  Borders, identities and phonological variation in the north-east of England. February 2003, with Carmen Llamas.

Media coverage

I have been interviewed numerous times for radio programmes in the UK and internationally, and in January 2010 appeared in ‘The North South Divide’, a documentary presented by John and Pauline Prescott. I was interviewed by Morgan Spurlock for his film celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘The Simpsons’ (on the use of accent), and am currently involved in the production of a BBC Radio 4 programme on accent and dialect in the UK.