Dr. Beth Macleod

Biography

Beth MacLeod is an Associate Professor and the Associate Director of Linguistics at Carleton University, specializing in phonetics and sociolinguistics. Her research focuses on phonetic imitation, language acquisition, and sociophonetics, where she examines how social variation impacts phonetic realization. She investigates the ways speakers subconsciously alter their pronunciation to align with others, and the implications this has for understanding language and dialect acquisition. MacLeod's work addresses significant issues in the fields, such as mental representations of speech sounds and patterns, specifically in dialects and the evolution of language. She supervises graduate students in research topics related to individual differences in perception and production of phonetic cues, particularly in multilingual contexts. Her academic contributions include numerous publications and presentations at major conferences, reflecting her active engagement in advancing the field of linguistics. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo and both a Master's and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Toronto.

Research Interests