Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/

Abstract

Despite the importance of gender differences in the voice, sociolinguists have not paid sufficient attention to the sociolinguistic processes through which phonetic resources are mobilized in the construction of a gendered voice. This article argues that gender differences in the voice—including those influenced by physiology—are best understood as elements of sociolinguistic style rather than static properties. With a focus on transgender speakers in the early stages of masculinizing hormone therapy, the analysis demonstrates the complex interrelationship of the gendered meanings attributable to characteristics like fundamental frequency and /s/. Trans speakers challenge systems for categorizing voices as female or male, which assume that different aspects of the gendered voice will pattern together in normative ways. Yet a voice's gender is not a unidimensional feature, but a cluster of features that take on meaning only in context with one another, leaving them open for recombination and change through stylistic bricolage. (Transgender, style, gender, voice, pitch, sibilants)

FromSissytoSickening:The Indexical Landscape of /s/ in SoMa, San Francisco

“…First, the frontedness of /s/ has been linked with gender and sexual identities in both speech production and perception studies. Second, while other linguistic features strongly correlated with gender may be influenced by biology (e.g., fundamental frequency, see Zimman for a review), variation in the production of /s/ results from differences in articulation rather than biologically governed differences (e.g., Strand ; Fuchs and Toda ; Flipsen et al. ; Zimman ).…”

Transgender voices: Insights on identity, embodiment, and the gender of the voice

“…Reporting on a longitudinal study of trans men and other trans masculine individuals, Zimman () focuses on the importance of considering multiple phonetic features when characterizing the gendered voice. While F0 may be the easiest way to categorize a voice as female/feminine or male/masculine, the analysis of F0 together with /s/ in this piece underscores that the gendered features of the voice do not always bundle together in normative ways.…”

Linguistic Anthropology in 2017: It Could Be Otherwise

“…Scholars exploring such semiotic underpinnings of broader social imaginaries often invoke Anderson's Imagined Communities () (such as Bishara ; Choksi ; Eldredge ; Graan ; Nakassis ; Sharma and Phyak ; Westinen ; Zimman ). Some of these works explicitly outline how the processes they studied contrasted with the historically, politically, and technologically contingent modes described by Anderson.…”