Vowel duration and the voicing effect across dialects of English

The ‘voicing effect’ – the durational difference in vowels preceding voiced and voiceless consonants – is a well-documented phenomenon in English, where it plays a key role in the production and perception of the English final voicing contrast. Despite this supposed importance, little is known as to how robust this effect is in spontaneous connected speech, which is itself subject to a range of linguistic factors. Similarly, little attention has focused on variability in the voicing effect across dialects of English, bar analysis of specific varieties. Our findings show that the voicing of the following consonant exhibits a weaker-than-expected effect in spontaneous speech, interacting with manner, vowel height, speech rate, and word frequency. English dialects appear to demonstrate a continuum of potential voicing effect sizes, where varieties with dialect-specific phonological rules exhibit the most extreme values. The results suggest that the voicing effect in English is both substantially weaker than previously assumed in spontaneous connected speech, and subject to a wide range of dialectal variability

How Variable are English sibilants?

This paper takes a corpus-phonetic approach to consider variability in word-initial, prevocalic English sibilants in 5k speakers, 235k tokens, from 27 geo-social-ethnic regions of North America and the British Isles. We analyse ERBtransformed, spectral peak measures calculated from amplitude-normalised multitaper spectra using a ‘distributional’ Bayesian mixed-effects regression which explicitly models token, speaker, and regionlevel variability. Following previous phonetic and sociolinguistic research we expected English /s/ to be more variable than /S/. The results, however, differ according to the level at which we consider variability. Across English regions, /s/ and /S/ show a similar degree of variability. Across speakers within-region, /s/ is generally more variable than /S/, and within speakers, /s/ is generally more variable by token than /S/, both results likely reflecting linguistic and social-indexical sources of variation—such as gender, which has a greater effect on spectral peak for /s/ than for /S/

Confronting the Limits of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critique

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Vowel duration and the voicing effect across English dialects

The ‘voicing effect’ – the durational difference in vowels preceding voiced and voiceless consonants – is a well-documented phenomenon in English, where it plays a key role in the production and perception of the English final voicing contrast. Despite this supposed importance, little is known as to how robust this effect is in spontaneous connected speech, which is itself subject to a range of linguistic factors. Similarly, little attention has focused on variability in the voicing effect across dialects of English, bar analysis of specific varieties. Our findings show that the voicing of the following consonant exhibits a weaker-than-expected effect in spontaneous speech, interacting with manner, vowel height, speech rate, and word frequency. English dialects appear to demonstrate a continuum of potential voicing effect sizes, where varieties with dialect-specific phonological rules exhibit the most extreme values. The results suggest that the voicing effect in English is both substantially weaker than previously assumed in spontaneous connected speech, and subject to a wide range of dialectal variability

"La cadena sexo-género-revolución"

When carrying out political projects, the use of homosexual/heterosexual or trans*/cis distinctions as exclusive categories of analysis may limit the understanding of the complexity of belongings in which each subject is positioned. In many cases, including some queer approaches, this strategy provides for a simplification, which attributes a radical or subversive nature to the first term of the pair and a normal or even repressive one to the second. The former case results in what is here called a "homo-trans*-revolution series" the latter, in a "hetero-cis-repression series". In both instances, a passage from generalization to reduction to invisibilization obstructs any understanding either of the conservative positions existing in the realm of the homo/trans*, or of the subversive and radical ones in the sphere of the hetero/cis. Exposing both of them will allow us to understand that a dissident, fertile collective political project cannot be based solely on sexuality or gender: it must build intersectional bridges based on political approaches and objectives, without falling into generalizations and maintaining the flexibility we seek in queer approaches.Fil: Pérez, Moira Patricia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Lomas de Zamora. Facultad de Derecho; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Wench Tactics? Openings in Conditions of Closure

Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments