While Brazil is home to one of the world’s richest reserves of linguistic diversity, the infrastructure for low-level phonetic and phonological fieldwork in the country is scarce. At Universidade de São Paulo (USP), students in African Studies and related programmes typically receive solid theoretical foundations, but lack access to hands-on training in phonetic field methods, up to and including instrumental techniques as well as widely used piece of software such as Praat. Most low-level phonetic documentation (especially any involving advanced articulatory technologies, such as electroglottography, henceforth EGG) is conducted by researchers from outside Brazil. Advanced research tools are often deemed too expensive and training too specialised for local universities to invest in them. This only reinforces an unsustainable model of extractive academic practices.

This project addresses this issue and aims to transfer practical, durable skills in phonetic documentation to a new generation of researchers based at USP. This is key to building research capacity in Brazil and ensuring that future studies of endangered languages and underdocumented phonetic phenomena are led by researchers from local academic and social contexts, who have both the direct interest and ease of access to the concerned areas that are necessary for long-term documentation efforts. This project also aims to train local scholars willing to participate in the proposed course in the use of portable articulatory-analysis devices to a high level of proficiency, so that they may transfer the same skills to their students after the project itself is concluded. This, at a time when linguistic diversity is disappearing minimally as fast as biological diversity, is a key objective for not only the Global South but all interested parties.

Methods and Activities

Week 1: Acoustics

• Introduction to the goals of phonetic documentation in field linguistics.
• Core acoustic theory: speech production and perception, source-filter model, etc.
• Introduction to Praat: spectrogram reading, segmentation, annotation, and basic analysis.

Week 2: Electroglottography

• Setting up and using EGG in non-lab conditions.
• Articulatory timing, glottal cycles, and voicing in rare phonemes.
• Recording and analysis exercises using own EGG device.
• Student group work: designing a mini field session with acoustic + EGG data

Week 3: Recording in the (simulated) field

• Field-ready audio setups: microphones, recorders, EGG, settings, etc.
• Ethics and logistics: informed consent, working with consultants, data security, backup, etc.
• In-class mock recording sessions with real participants.

Week 4: Analysis and conclusion

• Analysing results.
• Theoretical implications of phonetic fieldwork for phonological analysis.
• Roundtable: How can Brazil develop its own tradition of phonetic fieldwork?