Richard Ogden is Professor of Linguistics at the University of York. His research focuses on the phonetic details of naturally occurring conversation, including turn-taking, and the phonetic implementation of social actions, combining conversation analytic and phonetic methods. He also has an interest in multimodality.

• List of figures and tablesTo readers Acknowledgements Introduction to phonetics Overview of the human speech mechanism Representing the sounds of speech The larynx, voicing and phonation type VowelsApproximants Plosives Fricatives Nasals Glottalic and velaric airstreams Sounds and structuresConclusionGlossaryDiscussion of the exercisesFurther readingIndex

This concise and clearly written book is highly practical, encouraging readers to engage in the description, transcription and analysis of a wide range of speech sounds, as well as introducing readers to the acoustics of speech sounds in an accessible way. It serves as ideal preparation for more advanced study.