Profile

Career

• Northern Counties College of Education
  Certificate of Education with distinctions in English, music and the practice of teaching (1966 - 1969)
• University of Newcastle upon Tyne
  BA in English Language and Literature (honours, first class) (1970 - 1973)
  PhD in Linguistics: Studies towards the description of the development and functioning of children's awareness of linguistic variability (1973 - 1976)
• Forest Hall County Secondary School (Newcastle upon Tyne)
  Teacher, music and English (1969 - 1970)
• University of York
  Lecturer in phonetics and linguistics, Department of Language and Linguistic Science (1976 - 1991)
  Professor of Phonetics and Linguistics, Department of Language & Linguistic Science (1993 - )
• British Academy
  Research reader in phonetics and meaning of talk-in-interaction (2000 - 2002)

University roles

• Pro-vice chancellor for research
  

Research

Overview

My current research interests lie in articulatory and acoustic phonetics, non-linear phonology and Conversation Analysis. I am particularly interested in how Conversation Analytic methodology can inform and reshape our understanding of the functioning of phonetic detail and phonetic variation.

Current projects

• The Sequential and Linguistic-Phonetic Design of Indirectness in Talk-in-interaction
  I am currently working with Professor Paul Drew (Sociology) and Dr Traci Curl on an AHRB-funded project. We will be looking at how speakers use phonetic features and the sequential organisation of turns at talk to accomplish indirectness, and we will investigate how these phonetic and sequential features are reacted to by interlocutors.

Collaborators

• Professor Paul Drew
  University of York (Sociology)
• Dr Traci Walker
  University of York (Language and Linguistics)

Publications

Selected publications

• Local, J., J. Kelly and B. Wells (1986). Towards a phonology of conversation: turn-taking in urban Tyneside speech. Journal of Linguistics 22, 2: 411-437.
• Kelly, J. and J. Local (1989). Doing Phonology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Local, J. (1992). Modelling assimilation in a non-segmental, rule-free phonology. In G. Docherty and R. Ladd (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology II, pp. 190-223. Cambridge University Press.
• Local, J. (1996). Conversational phonetics: some aspects of news receipts in everyday talk. . In E. Couper-Kuhlen & M. Selting (Eds.), Prosody in Conversation: Ethnomethodological Studies, pp 175-230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Local, J. (2003). Variable domains and variable relevance: interpreting phonetic exponents. Journal of Phonetics 31, 321-339.
• Local, J. (2004). Getting back to prior talk: and-uh(m) as a back-connecting device. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and C. Ford (Eds.), Sound patterns in interaction: cross-linguistic studies of phonetics and prosody for conversation, pp. 377-400. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Local, J. and K. Lodge. (2004). Some auditory and acoustic observations on the phonetics of [ATR] harmony in a speaker of a dialect of Kalenjn. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 34, 1: 1-16.
• Local, J. and G. Walker. (2004). Abrupt-joins as a resource for the production of multi-unit, multi-action turns. Journal of Pragmatics. 36, 1375-1403.
• Local, J. (2005). On the interactional and phonetic design of collaborative completions. In W. Hardcastle and J. Beck (Eds.), A Figure of Speech: a Festschrift for John Laver, pp. 263-282. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Local, J. and G. Walker (2005). Methodological imperatives for investigating the phonetic organization and phonological structures of spontaneous speech. Phonetica 62, 120-130.
• Curl, T., J. Local and G. Walker (2006). Repetition and the prosody-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics. 30, 1721-1751.
• P. Carter and J. Local (2007). F2 variation in Newcastle and Leeds English liquid systems. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Volume 37, 2, 183-199.

Teaching

Undergraduate

First year modules

• Introduction to phonetics
• Introduction to phonology
• English phonetics
• English phonology
• Conversation analysis

Second and final year modules

• Non-linear phonologies
• Firthian prosodic analysis
• Instrumental phonetics
• Articulatory and impressionistic phonetics
• Phonetics of talk-in-interaction
• Language acquisition
• Psycholinguistics

Postgraduate

• Core course
• Options in phonology
• Dissertation supervision

External activities

Memberships

• Marie Curie Research Training Network
  Member, Sound to Sense
• Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Communication
  Member
• Arts & Humanities
  Academic coordinator
• 2008 RAE sub-panel for Linguistics
  Chair