Chapter 1 begins with the key question, “What is sociophonetics and why should we care about it?”In response, the chapter introduces the field of sociophonetics, situating it within the framework of approaches to language in sociolinguistics and phonetics, but also as clearly aligned with work in allied fields such as computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and phonology.Along these lines, the chapter broadly surveys the foundational developments for the field and considers the promise of this newly emergent field.The chapter also highlights the core aims of the volume, which include a focus on its promise for research on both speech production and speech processing.