The Linguistics of Beatboxing

University of Southern California researchers of the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) have been examining the linguistic mechanisms that beatboxers use. Through the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the Speech Production and Articulation kNowledge Group (SPAN) has learned some very interesting things about the connection between vocal percussion and speech.

One of their greatest findings is that vocal percussionists use sounds that can be described using standard descriptions of speech sounds. As the paper says:

One of the most important findings of this study is that all of the sounds effects produced by the beatbox artist were able to be described using IPA—an alphabet designed exclusively for the description of contrastive (i.e., meaning encoding) speech sounds.

It expands from there to say that the sounds created can resemble those of other languages, including languages that are not native to the language of the vocal percussionist.

The subject of this study is a speaker of American English and Panamanian Spanish, neither of which makes use of non-pulmonic consonants, yet he was able to produce a wide range of non-native consonantal sound effects, including clicks and ejectives.

It is sometimes said that music is its own language, but with this research comes evidence that beatboxing really is a language in itself.

If, as it appears from these data, such differences are minor rather than categorical, then it is remarkable that the patterns of articulatory coordination used in pursuit of paralinguistic goals appear to be consistent with those used in the production of spoken language.

You can see images, hear audio, and watch video on the multimedia site and read a PDF of the full report on their website.