Thesis Title:
What the voice tells us about relative safety in a space: The utilisation of speech strategies by gender non-conforming speakers
Thesis Abstract:
While navigating our daily lives, we all experience the feeling of having different personalities suited for different contexts. We change our behaviours to subtly express our sense of self and our relationships with those around us, such as speaking differently to grandparents versus friends. Instead of explicitly voicing how we feel in a space, we often convey this information through the way we sound. One such resource is the vocal pitch. While a plethora of work in sociolinguistics has established how pitch is tied to expressions of gender and queer identities, the importance of variation in vocal pitch for navigating gender and queerness remains underexplored. For queer individuals, such speech modifications are also a key resource for navigating the often-hostile terrain of gender normativity.
This study will examine how queer individuals modulate their voices —including vocal pitch, vocal range (the extent of highs and lows), and prosody (the melodic or monotonous nature)— to adapt to different environments, focusing on the relative safety of the interactional context. This work will contribute to our theoretical understanding of the relationship between the voice and social meaning. Moreover, it will provide valuable insights into identity expression that can inform policies and practices of inclusivity in education, voice therapy, and beyond.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Chantal Gratton