Voice Onset Time in English Stops: A Case Study of French President Emmanuel Macron’s English Address to the British Parliament in 2025

Abstract

This study investigates the acoustic characteristics of voice onset time (VOT) for the English speech of French President Emmanuel Macron during his address to the British Parliament in 2025. A case-study approach was used to analyze English plosive consonant sounds in Macron's speech, specifically looking at (/p, t, k, b, d, g/), to determine how second-language (L2) phonological production is shaped by the first language and the settings of formal sociolinguistics. Acoustic analysis completed using Praat software demonstrated that the speaker consistently makes a distinction between voiceless and voiced stops and completely inhibits the presence of the "negative VOT" or pre-voicing typically associated with French voiced stops, using English-like short-lag timing (9–27 ms) instead. However, for voiceless stops, the speaker's output yielded intermediate VOT values (31-53 ms), which fall between French short-lag norms and native English long-lag aspiration (50-90 ms). The findings of this research provide evidence for the Interlanguage Hypothesis, with especially proficient second-language speakers, on prominent diplomatic platforms, creating hybridized phonetic categories. The results further indicate that while formal registers may encourage "hyper-correction" and articulatory monitoring, underlying L1 motor-speech habits and place-of-articulation effects remain persistent markers of a "globalized" but accented phonetic profile.