Public Linguistics Presentation Q

[Daniel Hieber]

I once pulled out my digital recorder at my parents' home, and recorded
them saying their primary vowels, showed them the spectrograms, then
quickly mapped their formants in a vowel space and showed them the
resulting chart. It took all of maybe 20 minutes. I was surprised to find
that they thought this was the coolest thing ever, and were extremely
impressed. In particular, they liked that you could see the intonation
contours on Praat, and see the difference between questions and
declaratives. Also that you could see the difference between male and
female pitch.

Anything where people get to analyze their own speech in some way seems
like it would go over well. Perhaps polling the audience about dialectal
differences.

best,

Danny


On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 12:22 PM, s.t. bischoff <bischoff.st at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I've been asked to participate in a program called "Lunch with a Scientist"
> at our local science center. The program organizer has provided me with a
> request for a brief description of what I will be presenting:
>
> I.    *a brief description of what the day/program will entail.  For those
> professors new to the program, please remember that a hands-on approach is
> what we’re trying for.  That could be an activity, or lots of really cool
> props.*
>
> The presentation/activity will be about 60 minutes. I have some ideas, but
> was curious if anyone had suggestions or might have actually done something
> like this before. Participants will include folks from the community,
> adults and children.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Shannon
>



-- 

Omnis habet sua dona dies.
     ~ Martial