Sociophonetics is the study of how social factors (such as age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status) interact with the sounds of speech. It combines methods from sociolinguistics and phonetics to examine both the acoustic and articulatory properties of speech and the social meanings they carry. Researchers in sociophonetics investigate how people use subtle sound differences to interpret these cues. In short, it explores the intersection of language, society, and sound.