“It’s a Rap”
NC State’s phonetics lab offers insight on everything from jaw surgeries to rappers.
Dr. Jeff Mielke is the director of the phonetics lab at North Carolina State University; the lab is a small room tucked between two classrooms on the bottom floor of Tompkins Hall with multiple recording booths, one outfitted with equipment to perform an ultrasound on the human tongue.
Preserving endangered languages
The ultrasounds are used to visualize the physiological differences that occur in pronunciations, such as in the word “street” and “shtreet,” said Mielke.
The phonetics lab at NCSU has ongoing projects involved with the preservation and understanding of endangered languages in Peru and Pakistan, which include Bora and Kalasha, respectively.
“We have been involved in collecting recordings, both ultrasound and audio recordings of speakers who might be one of the last few thousand speakers of their language. We can do things like record people telling stories and reading poetry so that that will exist for future generations.”
Helping patients get funding for invasive jaw surgery
The lab works with the dental school at UNC-Chapel Hill to help analyze speech before and after jaw surgery to see if there’s evidence the surgery improves an individual’s speech.
“We’ve been working with them to analyze hundreds of recordings of people before and after jaw surgery,” said Mielke. “It helps orthodontists and oral surgeons give good advice about whether people should get surgery and justify it to the insurance companies.”
Most people wouldn’t be able to afford the surgery without help from their insurance provider, he adds.
Jeannene Matthews, a graduate student with a background in speech pathology, works in the phonetics lab and hopes to use the audio recordings to show a trend that invasive jaw surgery can improve one’s speech.
“There will be some meaningful data that shows what the trend is before and after surgery to make the case that changes are meaningful in a medical way so that insurers could be more involved in covering that surgery for people.”
The surgeries often involve intensive recovery after breaking the jaw bone, but markedly improve severe cases of underbite and cleft palate.
Studying phonetic context in rappers
Stephen Black, another graduate student in the phonetics lab, is researching the way African Americans articulate certain words. He’s specifically interested in the pronunciation of the “shkreet” in words like street or strawberry where there is a distinct difference in the way the word is articulated, found predominantly in the south and heard with popular rappers.
“If you wanna hear an example of it, just listen to any Gucci Mane interview ever,” said Black. “He does it a lot. 21 Savage does it sometimes. I’m interested to see what phonetic context it happens in; if it’s in the middle of the word, does it happen more or less often versus the beginning of a word?”
Allen MacMillan, a senior majoring in chemistry, produced this article as part of his fall 2024 coursework in ENG 316 “Introduction to News and Article Writing.” Edited by Christa Gala.
