Workshop: Palatography
This workshop has now taken place
Notes from the workshop can be downlaoded here sample workshop outline
A field guide for doing palatography can be downlaoded here field guide for palatography
Palatography is a technique in phonetic research to determine the place and manner of articulation of speech sounds. It involves painting the tongue or palate with a non-toxic paint such as a paste of charcoal powder and vegetable oil, pronouncing a speech sound, taking a photo and interpreting the imprint that the painted articulator left on either the palate or tongue.
In May 2010, Sophie Salffner (SOAS) and Will Bennett (Rutgers University, New Jersey) led a workshop on palatography that was attended by fifteen participants from SOAS, UCL, Salford University, Cambridge University and the University of York.
In the workshop, Sophie and Will presented some background information on what palatography is and what it can and cannot be used for. They compiled their own sets of test words, made palatograms and linguograms of the sounds to be investigated and ate lots of pineapple chunks to clean the charcoal and oil mixture from their tongues! They evaluated their palatograms and the photographs they took and carried out some initial data interpretation. They discussed how to keep their records and the type of metadata they would have to collect with the data. Finally, they exchanged ideas on ethical and hygiene issues involved in the data collection.
In the photos you can see two of the workshop participants mixing medicinal charcoal powder with olive oil to make the paint. Then the paint is brushed either on the palate or on the tongue. After the word has been pronounced, an imprint is left on the tongue, here the pattern of Sophie's, which is a nice central alveolar fricative even though it is slightly off-centre.
If you want to hold your own palatography workshop you can find a sample workshop outline and the field guide for doing palatography at the top of this webpage, which you can download. ELAP has kindly sponsored two palatography kits (one for fieldwork and one for training purposes) which are now hosted by the Linguistics Department. For more information, please email Sophie Salffner (ss123@soas.ac.uk).
First the medicinal charcoal powder is mixed with olive oil. The paint is then brushed either on the palate or on the tongue. When a word is pronounced, an imprint is left on the tongue.
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