Synopsis Phonetics is the scientific study of the production, transmission and reception of speech sounds. It studies the medium of spoken language. Touching upon physiology and physics, phonetics is now a pure science that studies speech processes, including the anatomy, neurology and pathology of speech, as well as the articulation, description, classification, production and perception of speech sounds. It looks at speech from three distinct but interdependent viewpoints: it studies the speech organs, which produce sounds of language; it studies waves, the physical form in which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another; and it studies the way in which human beings perceive sounds through the medium of the ear.