Categories, stereotypes, and the linguistic perception of sexuality
TLDR
This article examined how social stereotypes influence listeners' perceptions of indexical language and found that stereotypical attitudes and beliefs about categories of speakers serve to enable the association of linguistic features with particular social meanings while simultaneously blocking others.Abstract:
This article examines how social stereotypes influence listeners' perceptions of indexical language. Building on recent developments in linguistics and social psychology, I investigate the extent to which stereotypical attitudes and beliefs about categories of speakers serve to enable the association of linguistic features with particular social meanings while simultaneously blocking others. My arguments are based on an analysis of listener perceptions of the intersecting categories of gender, sexuality, and social class among men in the UK. Using a modified matched-guise paradigm to test three category-relevant variables (mean pitch, spectral characteristics of /s/, and TH-fronting), I demonstrate how the perception of social meaning is governed by a combination of both attitudinal and cognitive factors. This finding is important because it illustrates the listener-dependent nature of sociolinguistic perception. Moreover, it also provides further empirical support for an understanding of social meaning as an emergent property of language-in-use. (speech perception, attitudes and stereotypes, sexuality, phonetic variation)*read more
Citations
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Beyond The Closet The Transformation Of Gay And Lesbian Life
TL;DR: In this paper, the transformation of gay and lesbian life is described beyond the closet in a book called "Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life".
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Integrating Intersectionality in Language, Gender, and Sexuality Research
TL;DR: The basic principles of what an intersectional approach to identity and identity-linked speech entails are outlined and suggestions about how to anchor a more comprehensive approach to intersectionality in sociolinguistic research are suggested.
Proceedings ArticleDOI
Voice as a Design Material: Sociophonetic Inspired Design Strategies in Human-Computer Interaction
TL;DR: This work argues that current VUIs do not adequately consider the diversity of peoples' speech, how that diversity represents sociocultural identities, and how voices have the potential to shape user perceptions and experiences and poses three design strategies for VUI voice output design - individualisation, context awareness, and diversification.
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Structure in talker variability: How much is there and how much can it help?
TL;DR: New techniques based on ideal observer models are presented to quantify the amount and type of structure in talker variation (informativity of a grouping variable), and how useful such structure can be for robust speech recognition in the face of talker variability (the utility of a grouped variable).
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Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/
TL;DR: The authors argue that gender differences in the voice are best understood as elements of sociolinguistic style rather than static properties, and demonstrate the complex interrelationship of the gendered meanings attributable to characteristics like fundamental frequency and /s/.
References
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