Kevin B. McGowan

Lab Director

speech perception
coarticulation
awareness
sound change

Kevin is not a sociophonetician, but he sometimes plays one at conferences. His research interests include speech perception, coarticulation, sound change, and listeners’ awareness & control of the relationship between social categories, linguistic categories, and phonetic detail. Kevin is a gesturalist who is convinced that the social world human’s inhabit is an essential part of our perceptual niche. He is interested in the interplay of linguistic and social knowledge and expectations in both speech perception and production.

Kevin B. McGowan in front of some trees

Current Projects

  • Social Silent Centers with Stella Takvoryan | Investigation of Listeners’ perceptions of social and linguistic information without vowel targets | Speech Perception, Social Information

  • Multilevel Perception of Artificial Voices with Kendal Smith | Comparing listeners’ low-level and high-level perceptions of deepfake voices | Speech Perception, Speech Synthesis

  • Gendered Stroop with Lindsey Bishop-Allen, C.J. Campen, Sloane Cheesebrough, Usep Muttaqin, and Stella Takvoryan | Comparing listeners’ performance on stereotypical vs experiential patterns of gender in lexical activation | Speech Perception, Social Information

  • Gendered McGurk | A response to Green et al. (1991), testing gendered McGurk with a gender-indexical speech sound | Speech Perception, Social Information

  • Y’alldzielski with Jennifer Cramer and Stella Takvoryan | An Eye Tracking version of the Niedzielski task in a Southern US context | Speech Perception, Social Information

  • Nosebud with Ollie Combs | A non-invasive method for real time investigation of velopharyngeal aperture | Speech Production

  • Pattern Playback App with Zoey Case | Re-implementation of the Pattern Playback Machine as a mobile phone app | Speech Synthesis

Selected Publications

McGowan, K. B., & Takvoryan, S. (in press). The Perception of Linguistic Features. In M. Baranowski, P. De Dekker, & J. Nycz (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Research Methods in Sociophonetics. Oxford University Press.
Takvoryan, S., & McGowan, K. B. (in press). The dynamic, social specification of coarticulated vowels. In R. V. Roeder & G. Alfaraz (Eds.), Accent, attitudes, and sound change. Benjamins.
McGowan, K. B. (2026). Toward an ecologically valid theory of speech perception (L. Hall-Lew & J. Nycz, Eds.). Oxford University Press.
Babel, A. M., Campbell-Kibler, K., & McGowan, K. B. (2025). Introduction to the thematic issue. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 29(1), 44–58. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12690
Laycock, K., & McGowan, K. B. (2025). Removing the disguise: The matched guise technique, incongruity, and listener awareness. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 29(3), 194–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12700
Barrett, R., Cramer, J., & McGowan, K. B. (2023). English with an accent: language, ideology and discrimination in the United States (Third edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003332886
Baese-Berk, M. M., McLaughlin, D. J., & McGowan, K. B. (2020). Perception of non-native speech. Language and Linguistics Compass, 14(7), e12375. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12375
McGowan, K. B., & Babel, A. M. (2020). Perceiving isn’t believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness. Language in Society, 49(2), 231–256.
McGowan, K. B., Johnson, M. T., Combs, A., & Soleymanpour, M. (2019). Acoustic, non-invasive measurement of velopharyngeal aperture using a high frequency tone. 755759.
Beddor, P. S., Coetzee, A. W., Styler, W., McGowan, K. B., & Boland, J. E. (2018). The time course of individuals’ perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change. Language, 94(4), 931–968.
McGowan, K. B. (2016). Sounding Chinese and listening Chinese: Awareness and knowledge in the laboratory. Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research, 25–61.
McGowan, K. B. (2015). Social expectation improves speech perception in noise. Language and Speech, 58(4), 502–521.
Sumner, M., Kim, S. K., King, E., & McGowan, K. B. (2014). The socially weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1015.
Beddor, P. S., McGowan, K. B., Boland, J. E., Coetzee, A. W., & Brasher, A. (2013). The time course of perception of coarticulation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 133(4), 2350–2366.