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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2017

Lal Zimman
Lal Zimman*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Lal Zimman, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Linguistics, Mail Code 3100, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100zimman@linguistics.ucsb.edu
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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)

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Language in Society , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , June 2017 , pp. 339 - 370
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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