1887
Volume 8, Issue 1
  • ISSN 2211-3770
  • E-ISSN: 2211-3789
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

While recent work in sociophonetics has focused on the speech of gay men (Gaudio 1994Podesva 2007Podesva, Roberts & Campbell-Kibler 2002), lesbian women (Camp 2009Van Borsel Vandaele & Corthals 2013), and transgender people (Zimman 2017a), the speech styles of asexual individuals remain understudied. This study analyzes an interview with a graysexual and homoromantic cisgender student at a research university in California, examining the segmental and prosodic characteristics of three voices he uses to construct and position his graysexual identity: a questioning voice, a judgmental voice, and a non-desiring voice. The analysis finds that the questioning voice is characterized by decreased speech rate, high F0, and modal phonation; the judgmental voice, by low F0; and the non-desiring voice, by low F0, narrow F0 range, low intensity, reduced gesture, flat facial expression, and a centralized vowel space. The results emphasize the importance of stylistic reticence to the construction of graysexuality.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/jls.18003.coo
2019-03-07
2024-12-10
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Agha, Asif
    2005 Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology15(1): 38–59. 10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38
    https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38 [Google Scholar]
  2. Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen
    1987Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511813085
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085 [Google Scholar]
  3. Bucholtz, Mary & Hall, Kira
    2004a Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society33(4): 469–515. 10.1017/S0047404504334020
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404504334020 [Google Scholar]
  4. 2004b Language and identity. InA Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Alessandro Duranti (ed), 369–394. Hoboken: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. 2008 All of the above: New coalitions in sociocultural linguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics12(4): 401–431. 10.1111/j.1467‑9841.2008.00382.x
    https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00382.x [Google Scholar]
  6. Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don
    (eds) 2006The Language and Sexuality Reader. London: Routledge. 10.4324/9780203013373
    https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203013373 [Google Scholar]
  7. Camp, Margaret
    2009 Japanese Lesbian Speech: Sexuality, Gender Identity, and Language. PhD dissertation, University of Arizona.
  8. Canning, Dominique A.
    2015 Queering asexuality: Asexual-inclusion in queer spaces. McNair Scholars Research Journal8(1): 55–74.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Chafe, Wallace
    1993 Prosodic and functional units of language. InTalking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research, Jane A. Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds), 33–42. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Du Bois, John, Schuetze-Coburn, Stephan, Cumming, Susanna & Paolino, Danae
    1993 Outline of discourse transcription. InTalking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research, Jane A. Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds), 45–89. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Du Bois, John & Kärkkäinen, Elise
    2012 Taking a stance on emotion: Affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction. Text and Talk: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse and Communication Studies32(4): 433–451. 10.1515/text‑2012‑0021
    https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2012-0021 [Google Scholar]
  12. Eckert, Penelope
    1996 Vowels and nail polish: The emergence of linguistic style in the preadolescent heterosexual marketplace. InGender and Belief Systems, Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim & Melinda Chen (eds), 183–190. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Gaudio, Rudolf
    1994 Sounding gay: Pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men. American Speech69(1): 30–57. 10.2307/455948
    https://doi.org/10.2307/455948 [Google Scholar]
  14. Ginoza, Mary Kame & Miller, Tristan
    2014 The 2014 AVEN community census: Preliminary findings, 1–19. https://​asexual​census​.files​.wordpress​.com​/2014​/11​/2014​census​preliminary​report​.pdf (March11 2018)
  15. Goodwin, Marjorie, Cekaite, Asta & Goodwin, Charles
    2012 Emotion as stance. InEmotion in Interaction, Marja-Leena Sorjonen & Anssi Peräklyä (eds), 16–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730735.003.0002
    https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730735.003.0002 [Google Scholar]
  16. Kitzinger, Celia & Frith, Hannah
    1999 Just say no? The use of conversation analysis in developing a feminist perspective on sexual refusal. Discourse & Society10(3): 293–316. 10.1177/0957926599010003002
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926599010003002 [Google Scholar]
  17. Kulick, Don
    2003 Language and desire. InThe Handbook of Language and Gender, Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds), 119–141. Hoboken: Blackwell. 10.1002/9780470756942.ch5
    https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch5 [Google Scholar]
  18. Levon, Erez
    2016 Conflicted selves: Language, religion and same-sex desire in Israel. InLanguage, Sexuality, and Power: Studies in Intersectional Sociolinguistics, Erez Levon & Ronald Beline Mendes (eds), 215–241. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Milani, Tommaso M.
    2013 Are ‘queers’ really ‘queer’? Language, identity and same-sex desire in a South African online community. Discourse & Society24(5): 615–633. 10.1177/0957926513486168
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926513486168 [Google Scholar]
  20. Pacho, Agata
    2017 Cake is better than sex: AVEN and asexuality. InSex in the Digital Age, Paul Nixon & Isabel Düsterhöft (eds), 134–146. New York: Routledge. 10.4324/9781315446240‑11
    https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315446240-11 [Google Scholar]
  21. Piller, Ingrid & Takahashi, Kimie
    2006 A passion for English: Desire and the language market. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism56: 59–83.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Podesva, Robert
    2007 Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona. Journal of Sociolinguistics11(4): 478–504. 10.1111/j.1467‑9841.2007.00334.x
    https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00334.x [Google Scholar]
  23. Podesva, Robert J., Roberts, Sarah J. & Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn
    2002 Sharing resources and indexing meanings in the production of gay styles. InLanguage and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert J. Podesva, Sarah J. Roberts & Andrew Wong (eds), 175–189. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Pratt, Teresa
    2018 Embodying toughness: LOT-raising, /l/ velarization, and retracted articulatory setting. (Paper presented at the92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Salt Lake City, Utah)
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Reddy, Sravana & Stanford, James
    2015 Toward completely automated vowel extraction: Introducing DARLA. Linguistics Vanguard1(1): 15–28. 10.1515/lingvan‑2015‑0002
    https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2015-0002 [Google Scholar]
  26. Rosenfelder, Ingrid, Fruehwald, Joe, Evanini, Keelan & Yuan, Jiahong
  27. Shiau, Hong-Chi
    2015 Lavender Mandarin in the sites of desire: Situating linguistic performances among Taiwanese gay men. Language & Communication42: 1–10. 10.1016/j.langcom.2015.01.005
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2015.01.005 [Google Scholar]
  28. Thomas, Erik R. & Kendall, Tyler
    2007 NORM: The vowel normalization and plotting suite. ​lingtools​.uoregon​.edu​/norm​/norm1.php (November19 2018)
  29. Trester, Anna Marie
    2009 Discourse marker ‘oh’ as a means for realizing the identity potential of constructed dialogue in interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics13(2): 147–168. 10.1111/j.1467‑9841.2009.00402.x
    https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2009.00402.x [Google Scholar]
  30. Van Borsel, John, Vandaele, Jana & Corthals, Paul
    2013 Pitch and pitch variation in lesbian women. Journal of Voice27(5): 656.e13–656.e16. 10.1016/j.jvoice.2013.04.008
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2013.04.008 [Google Scholar]
  31. Zimman, Lal
    2017a Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/. Language in Society46(3): 339–370. 10.1017/S0047404517000070
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000070 [Google Scholar]
  32. 2017b Operationalizing stance: Affective stance in a pervasively creaky transgender speaker. (Paper presented at the91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Austin, Texas)
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/jls.18003.coo
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/jls.18003.coo
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): asexuality; constructed dialogue; prosody; sexual refusal; sociophonetics
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error