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• Jitter Minor random variation in the length of the period of the glottal waveform.
• Juncture The joining of words. The phonetic features of sounds at word juncture may give a cue to how an utterance is to be divided into words. For instance in English pea stalks and peace talks are distinguished by at least two phenomena:
              (1) clipping of the vowel in peace which is absent in pea
              (2) aspiration of the [t] in talks which is absent in stalks.

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• Key An intonational feature. Key refers to the global scaling of pitch during the production of an intonation pattern. In high key, for instance, all pitch values are shifted to the high part of the speaker's pitch range. Key in some languages is used to signal the organisation of discourse into distinct topics, with high key being used to signal the beginning of a new topic and low key signalling the end of a topic.
• Kinesics [kaɪˈniːsɪks] The study of bodily movement as part of the communication process.
• Kinetic tone [kaɪˈnetɪk] See contour tone.