An interview with Peter Ladefoged

Abstract

In this 2005 interview, Peter Ladefoged, Distinguished Professor of Phonetics Emeritus at UCLA and USC Adjunct Professor, spoke candidly about his long and distinguished career as a scholar and instructor, as a former President of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), and as an editor of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA). Professor Ladefoged died on 24 January 2006, and numerous tributes to him have since appeared, including in JIPA 36.1 (June 2006). Among the topics treated in this interview are: the history and future of phonetics, the founding and growth of the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory, and Ladefoged's views on scholarly writing and on the place of phonetics both within linguistics and within humanistic and social scientific disciplines, more broadly. Professor Ladefoged had read proofs of the interview and approved the text, which was completed in the fall of 2005. The text of this interview was originally published in Semiotica 158 (2006) and is reprinted here with permission from Mouton de Gruyter.