Research
Major research topics:
Gender and the voice (in progress)
My dissertation deals with the changes that
occur in the voices of female-to-male transsexuals and others on the
tranasmasculine identity spectrum (i.e. those who were assigned to a
female gender role at birth, but who identify as men or with another masculine gender category)
undergoing testosterone therapy to masculinizine their bodies and their
voices. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in San Francisco, I analyze three phonetic
characteristics that have been linked to gender: F0, which is known to
lower with the introduction of testosterone therapy; vowel formants,
whose relationship to various aspects of physiology is less clear-cut;
and the frequencies in /s/, for which gender differences are largely if
not entirely based on articulation rather than physiology. The goal of
this project is to enhance our understanding of how biology, language
socialization, and identity each work to shape gendered phonetic
styles. The diverse experiences and gender expressions found among the
speakers in this study underscore the variety that exists among
speakers with male-sounding voices. I also discuss the ingenuity of transmasculine
speakers, who draw on the resources available to them in order to
construct new constellations of gendered speech traits that suit their sense of an "authentic" masculine self.
- Zimman, Lal (in progress). Talking
Like a Man: Biology, Socialization, Identity, and the Gendered Voice
among Female-to-Male Transgender Speakers. Doctoral
dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado,
Boulder.
- Zimman, Lal (2010). Biology,
socialization, and identity:
Accounting for the voices of female-to-male transsexuals
[extended
abstract based on presentation at 84th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic
Society of America, January 8, 2010]. eLanguage.
Perceived
sexual orientation
My earliest exploration of sociophonetic issues concerns the
perception of certain male speakers as "gay-sounding". Having observed
that many
trans men are perceived as gay men after their transition from female
to male, I
designed a project to compare trans speakers of various orientations to
both gay- and straight-sounding non-trans men. In both the pilot and
larger version of the research, the trans men I recorded were
indeed perceived in the same way as the gay-sounding non-trans men.
However, there were significant differences in the actual phonetic
styles implemented by
individual gay-sounding speakers. I explain these observations by
arguing that there are multiple phoonetic styles that can be perceived
as equally gay-sounding. Such an argument also points to the idea that
there may also be more than one way to acquire a gay-sounding voice.
- Zimman,
Lal (in progress). The diversity of gay-sounding speech:
Investigating
individual speaker styles in language and sexuality. (Based on
presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Dialect Society,
Pittsburgh, PA, January 8, 2011).
- Zimman, Lal (under revision). More than one way to sound gay: Trans men and
gay-sounding
voices.
- Zimman, Lal (2010). Female-to-male
transsexuals and gay-sounding
voices: A pilot study. Colorado
Research in Linguistics. 22(1).
Discourse in trans
communities
Because my interest in the linguistic practices of trans communities
extends beyond the sociophonetic realm, I have also considered some of
the discursive patterns that arise in these groups. First, I have
considered the linguistic construction of biological sex.
Post-structuralist
feminists – most famoulsy Judith Butler –
have argued
that the dichotomy between sex (as a biological or 'natural'
phenomenon) and gender (as a socially constructed phenomenon) is
misleading, and that sex is no more natural than gender. That is, the
way we understand bodies is heavily influenced by our cultural and
historical context. Despite our tendency to see current scientific
discourses as definitive and objective, there are many other ways in
which the body can be conceptualized. In fact, one needn't go far to
find these
competing models, and trans men's talk about their own and each other's
bodies is a case in point. Based on data collected from an online
community for trans men and others on the transmasculine identity spectrum, I explain how many trans speakers subvert the
semantics of gendered body part terminology (particularly genital
terms) in order to construct their physiology as male-bodied and redefine biological
sex
as a matter of self-determination.
- Zimman, Lal (forthcoming). The discursive
construction of
sex: Remaking and
reclaiming the body in talk about genitals among trans men.
In Lal Zimman, Jenny Davis, & Joshua Raclaw (Eds.), Queer Excursions: Retheorizing
Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford
University Press. [email me for the manuscript]
- Zimman, Lal & Kira Hall (2009). Language, embodiment,
and the "third sex". In Dominic Watt and Carmen
Llamas (eds.), Language and Identities.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 166-178.
I have also done some work on the coming out narratives of trans people
and how they reflect the disjuncture between sexual minorities
(particularly gays and lesbians) and those marginalized on the basis of
gender identity and expression (in this case, people who have undergone
a change in social gender role).
Discourse and the media
As
a
sideline to my research on LGBTQ communities, I have also written about
discourse continuity in media contexts: specifically, reality
television. Reality
TV, as a
relatively new genre, has shifted viewers' expectations of how
"reality" is portrayed in the media. My interest is in the way the
appearance of discourse continuity and coherence is created through an
editing process that inevitably creates discontinuity.
As part of this process, discontinuous pieces of talk are strung
together as if they were part of a single interaction or sequence, and
I argue that editors rely on viewers to use their knowledge of how
ordinary discourse is organized to construct discourse continuity where
there is none.
- Zimman, Lal (in progress). "She's just
a high-maintenance bitch": Interpersonal drama &
discourse continuity in reality television. (Based on presentation at
the Arizona Linguistics and
Anthropology Symposium, University of Arizona, May 10, 2008).
Hyper- &
hypo-articulation
Because of the importance of clarity and markers of
hyper- and
hypoarticulation in the indexical fields of gender and sexuality, I
have recently begun to work on questions about the social meaning
of these modes of speaking as well as the phonetic implications of their sociolinguistic significance.
- Zimman, Lal (in progress). A
sociophonetic
perspective on hyper- and hypoaritculation: Nasal coarticulation and
gay-sounding
voices.
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