Department of Modern English Language and Linguistics
Dr Abigail Mensah-King joined Bede University in 2025 following the completion of her doctoral research into vowel restructuring in Ghanaian English. Her research interests include sociophonetics, World Englishes and the relationship between phonetic variation and speaker identity. Her first monograph, The Sounds of the Outer Circle: Phonetics in Africa (2025), examines patterns of linguistic variation in Ghanaian English. She is currently developing several further publications arising from this research.
Teaching
MELL101 Introduction to Linguistics
MELL102: Introduction to Phonetics
MELL201: Further Phonetics
MELL302: Advanced Phonetics
Publications
- Mensah-King, A. (2025) The Sounds of the Outer Circle: Phonetics in Africa. Purple Moon Press: Basingstoke.
Under review
- Mensah-King, A. (under review) Vowel restructuring in contemporary Ghanaian English: Evidence from a small-scale acoustic study. World Varieties of English.
- Mensah-King, A. (under review) Phonetic variation and speaker identity in urban Ghanaian English: Preliminary observations. English in Global Contexts.
In preparation
- Mensah-King, A. (in preparation) Towards a sociophonetic account of vowel variation in Ghanaian English.