Beth MacLeod

Beth MacLeod is an Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University. She holds degrees from the University of Waterloo (BMath) and the University of Toronto (MA & PhD in Linguistics). Her research focuses on phonetic variation, with three core areas: phonetic imitation (how speakers adapt their pronunciation), sociophonetics (social meaning in speech sounds), and second language acquisition of phonetics and phonology. She explores how these phenomena intersect with sound change, dialect acquisition, and listener perception.

MacLeod has supervised research on diverse topics including Spanish stop voicing contrast, attitudes toward Toronto's pronunciation, and the Canadian Shift in Ottawa English. She currently leads a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant ($107,188) examining language use across lifespans and collaborates on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant ($65,299) analyzing phonetic imitation. Her work bridges laboratory phonetics with sociolinguistic theory, emphasizing individual variation in speech perception-production links.

Recent presentations include investigations of vowel centralization in Spanish (LabPhon19, 2024) and co-articulation in Laurentian French (ICPhS, 2023). Her research highlights interdisciplinary methods, combining acoustic analysis with articulatory data to understand speech production and perception dynamics.