Lexical Change as Sociopolitical Change in Trans and Cis Identity Labels: New Methods for the Corpus Analysis of Internet Data

This paper uses corpus linguistic methods and general purpose computing tools to explore short-scale lexical change in the identity terminology used in an online community for transgender men and other transmasculine people. It focuses on the rapidly changing landscape of labels for trans people, cis people, and non-binary people in a trans community on LiveJournal.com, which was a popular social media venue among trans people in the 2000s. We consider a number of questions about lexical change, including when currently popular forms (e.g. cisgender, non-binary, transmasculine, etc.) were introduced; the decline of labels that have been problematized (e.g. transgendered, transsexual); and the sociocultural discourses that contextualize and account for these changes. We also describe novel methods for social media data collection, which rely on simple custom software, which we call livecorpus. Livecorpus was built for use with widely-available cloud computing tools, meaning that it is serverless (i.e. does not require the provisioning of the analyst’s own servers) and offers flexible configuration that can be modified as data collection progresses. These methods can be applied to other social media sources that are not pre-formatted in ways that facilitate automated analysis, which in practice means we can reach further back into the history of social media-based language use. While scholars of language variation and change have tended to focus on phonological and morphosyntactic variables in unselfconscious vernacular speech rather than the lexicon, we argue that speakers’ awareness of – and metalinguistic discourses about – lexical choices makes this level of language an ideal site for considering linguistic manifestations of sociopolitical change. Far from an unfortunate exception to the normal, non-conscious process of structural linguistic transformation, these types of intentional interventions into lexical usage must be recognized as a critical component of language change

How we got here: Short-scale change in identity labels for trans, cis, and non-binary people in the 2000s

Though understudied in research on language variation and change, the lexicon is a crucial domain for sociopolitical transformations of language. This paper presents a corpus-based sociolinguistic analysis of changes in terms for transgender, cisgender, and non-binary individuals in four online communities on the social media blogging site, LiveJournal.com – one for trans women, one for trans men, one for non-binary people, and another for transgender people in general – that were popular in the 2000s. Using innovative corpus methods that utilize general purpose cloud computing tools, we focus on changes in the popularity of labels for trans, cis, and non-binary people, the factors that impact the variable use of these terms, and what kinds of differences can be observed across the four LiveJournal communities of practice studied. It thereby contributes both to the study of language and identity in trans and queer communities and to the development of methods for studying large datasets of technologically-mediated communication

Voices in Transition: Testosterone, Transmasculinity, and the Gendered Voice among Female-to-MaleTransgender People

This dissertation is based on a long-term ethnographic and sociophonetic study of 15 transgender people on the female-to-male (or transmasculine) identity spectrum. The focus of the study is the way these individuals’ voices change during the first 1-2 years of masculinizing hormone therapy, which brings about a drop in vocal pitch along with other salient physiological changes. Based on regular recordings of participants during a one year period, the analysis tracks changes in fundamental frequency as well as formant frequencies and the acoustic characteristics of [s], each of which has a different place in biology-driven theories of gender and the voice. In addition to ostensibly hormonally driven changes to speakers’ available fundamental frequency range, I present evidence that these speakers are engaged in various types of articulatory shifts as part of their gender role transition, which affect both formants and [s]. However, I argue that changes in all three of the phonetic domains examined here must be situated in both sociocultural and linguistic context, even where biology appears to play a significant role. The analyses presented, which include attention to both intra- and inter-speaker variation, draw on a multilayered understanding of gender derived from transgender people’s own distinctions between gender assignment, gender role, gender identity, and gender presentation. My speakers’ metalinguistic commentary on gender and the voice further elucidates the constellations of phonetic features that combine to create their cohesive gendered speaking styles. Ultimately, I focus on the ways that changes in one phonetic variable, like pitch, can recontextualize other elements of a speaker’s linguistic style, like the acoustic spectrum of [s]. This connection drives home the necessity of considering the relationship between linguistic characteristics, rather than treating them as entirely separable variables. Attention to stylistic wholes, over individual variables, points us toward the notion that transmasculine individuals do not engage in across the- board masculinization, but rather bring together acoustic characteristics acquired from disparate sources in order to construct phonetic styles that reflect their complex affiliations with manhood, maleness, and masculinity

Biology, socialization, and identity: Accounting for the voices of female-to-male transsexuals

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"I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness

This article outlines the shared identity construction of five gay and lesbian members of an LGBT youth group, situated in a conservative, working-class, Northern English town. It is shown that the young people’s identity work emerges in response to the homophobia and ‘othering’ they have experienced from those in their local community. Through ethnography and discourse analysis, and using theoretical frameworks from interactional sociolinguistics, the strategies that the young people employ to negotiate this othering are explored; they reject certain stereotypes of queer culture (such as Gay Pride or being ‘camp’), and aim to minimise the relevance of their sexuality to their social identity. It is argued this reflects both the influence of neoliberal, ‘homonormative’ ideology, which casts sexuality in the private rather than public domain, and the stigma their sexuality holds in their local community. These findings point to the need to understand identity construction intersectionally

Variability in /s/ among transgender speakers: Evidence for a socially grounded account of gender and sibilants

AbstractSibilant consonants are well-established as resources for the negotiation of gender and sexuality, but the origin of these links is less clearly agreed upon. Some researchers have pointed to sex differentiation in the vocal anatomy as a potential cause for gender differences in /s/, though a review of the literature indicates that learned articulatory patterns play a critical role. This article focuses on the spectral qualities of /s/ among 15 English-speaking transgender men and transmasculine individuals. Because their early socialization and physiological development is not normatively aligned with their self-defined gender identities, trans people are well-positioned to illuminate the relative contribution of physiology and identity to the gendered voice. Two analyses are presented, one of which focuses on inter-speaker variation among all 15 participants, and the other of which compares one bilingual speaker’s productions of /s/ in English and Spanish. Together, these analyses demonstrate that sex category does not determine the gender-linked acoustic characteristics of /s/. Instead, a more complex, multidimensional framework for gender that distinguishes between gender assignment, role, identity, and presentation is necessary to account for the full range of gendered phonetic styles that speakers can employ and hence to understand the process through which gendered voices arise

Lexical Change as Sociopolitical Change in Trans and Cis Identity Labels: New Methods for the Corpus Analysis of Internet Data

This paper uses corpus linguistic methods and general purpose computing tools to explore short-scale lexical change in the identity terminology used in an online community for transgender men and other transmasculine people. It focuses on the rapidly changing landscape of labels for trans people, cis people, and non-binary people in a trans community on LiveJournal.com, which was a popular social media venue among trans people in the 2000s. We consider a number of questions about lexical change, including when currently popular forms (e.g. cisgender, non-binary, transmasculine, etc.) were introduced; the decline of labels that have been problematized (e.g. transgendered, transsexual); and the sociocultural discourses that contextualize and account for these changes. We also describe novel methods for social media data collection, which rely on simple custom software, which we call livecorpus. Livecorpus was built for use with widely-available cloud computing tools, meaning that it is serverless (i.e. does not require the provisioning of the analyst’s own servers) and offers flexible configuration that can be modified as data collection progresses. These methods can be applied to other social media sources that are not pre-formatted in ways that facilitate automated analysis, which in practice means we can reach further back into the history of social media-based language use. While scholars of language variation and change have tended to focus on phonological and morphosyntactic variables in unselfconscious vernacular speech rather than the lexicon, we argue that speakers’ awareness of – and metalinguistic discourses about – lexical choices makes this level of language an ideal site for considering linguistic manifestations of sociopolitical change. Far from an unfortunate exception to the normal, non-conscious process of structural linguistic transformation, these types of intentional interventions into lexical usage must be recognized as a critical component of language change

Variability in /s/ among transgender speakers: Evidence for a socially grounded account of gender and sibilants

AbstractSibilant consonants are well-established as resources for the negotiation of gender and sexuality, but the origin of these links is less clearly agreed upon. Some researchers have pointed to sex differentiation in the vocal anatomy as a potential cause for gender differences in /s/, though a review of the literature indicates that learned articulatory patterns play a critical role. This article focuses on the spectral qualities of /s/ among 15 English-speaking transgender men and transmasculine individuals. Because their early socialization and physiological development is not normatively aligned with their self-defined gender identities, trans people are well-positioned to illuminate the relative contribution of physiology and identity to the gendered voice. Two analyses are presented, one of which focuses on inter-speaker variation among all 15 participants, and the other of which compares one bilingual speaker’s productions of /s/ in English and Spanish. Together, these analyses demonstrate that sex category does not determine the gender-linked acoustic characteristics of /s/. Instead, a more complex, multidimensional framework for gender that distinguishes between gender assignment, role, identity, and presentation is necessary to account for the full range of gendered phonetic styles that speakers can employ and hence to understand the process through which gendered voices arise