The phonetic bases of speaker recognition

How reliably can individuals be recognised by their voices? This question has recently been the subject of much debate among speech researchers and forensic scientists, and the controversial and crucial nature of that debate has stimulated a wide range of empirical research. In this book Dr Nolan argues convincingly that both the design and interpretation of many of these experiments are vitiated by the lack of a comprehensive model of variability between speakers, and within the speech of an individual. Lucidly detailing the complexity of spoken communication revealed by phonetic and linguistic research, Dr Nolan shows how this complexity must be incorporated into a model of speaker recognition. Given this model, and the results of the author’s own experiments which are presented in the book, the validity of any of the current techniques claiming reliable speaker identification (in particular the ‘voiceprint’ method used in some US courts) is shown to be negligible.