Trans and Queer Sociophonetics
Trans and queer approaches to the voice question basic assumptions about the way social positionalities and bodies are understood, mobilized, and put into action through phonetic variation.
TRILL members are exploring trans and queer sociophonetics by building more explicit theories of gender, sexuality, and the voice; exploring the co-production of gender, race, and sexuality; testing the application of widespread methods to trans voices; and qualitative approaches to the social weight of the voice.
TRILL Collaboration
TRILL members are currently working on a project, “Gender and Race Attribution in the Voices of Trans People of Color.” Collaborators include Lal Zimman and (alphabetically) Cooper Bedin, Julien De Jesus, Crystal Gong, Dozandri C. Mendoza, miles-hercules, Tudisco, and Willis.
Special issue of Gender and Language on Trans Linguistics (editors: Lal Zimman, Cedar Brown, deandre miles-hercules)
miles-hercules & Zimman, “Findings or fabrications? Methodological circularities in the analysis of vowel formants frequencies”
Mendoza, “‘That /s/ tiene tumbao: Chonga-fied sibilants and the disidentificatory sociophonetics of Miami Latinx drag”
Theorizing voice, gender & sexuality
Zimman, Lal (2018). Transgender voices: Insights on identity, embodiment, and the gender of the voice. Language and Linguistics Compass 12(8):e12284.
Zimman, Lal (2017). Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/. Language in Society 46(3):339–70.
Zimman, Lal (2017). Variability in /s/ among transgender speakers: Evidence for a socially grounded account of gender and sibilants. Linguistics 55(5):993–1019.
Zimman, Lal (2013). Hegemonic masculinity and the variability of gay-sounding speech: The perceived sexuality of transgender men. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2(1):1–39.
Theses & dissertations
Willis, Chloe (in progress). The Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Bisexuality in Language and Sexuality Studies. PhD Dissertation, Linguistics. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbara.
Brooke English (MA thesis, 2022). r/TransVoice: Emotions and Community-Based Voice Training. MA Thesis, Linguistics. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbara.
Chloe Willis (MA thesis, 2020). Bisexuality and /s/ production. MA Thesis, Linguistics. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbara.
