The Cisgender Listening Subject in Sociolinguistic Perception

Transgender Identity Affects Sibilant Categorization in American English

Bibliographic Data

ID3609841
AuthorsEmmett Jessee (0009-0002-6189-8494, University of Colorado Boulder Boulder Colorado USA), Jeff Calder (0000-0002-0388-7394, University of Colorado Boulder)
Year2025
Volume29
Issue3
Pages168-181
Publication date2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-6441 • E-ISSN: 1467-9841
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/josl.12702
OpenAlexW4408349768
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited58

Research in speech perception has shown that a speaker's gender identity affects how sibilants are categorized by perceivers. Here, we explore how transgender identity affects sibilant perception in North American English. In a replication of the Strand experiment, 90 listeners heard a male and a female voice, but half of the listeners were told that the speakers were transgender. Listeners' categorizations suggest that they expected transwomen to produce higher frequency /s/ than ciswomen. Additionally, when listeners did not personally know a trans person, this difference was magnified, and transmen were also expected to produce lower-frequency /s/ than cismen. We argue that the cisgender listening subject expects trans voices to diverge from cis voices, and this ideological expectation can be so pervasive that a perceiver's representations of sounds for trans speakers may differ from the sounds those trans speakers produce

Active listening · Art · Categorization · Identity (music · Linguistics · Perception · Social group · Social identity theory · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Subject (documents · Transgender · Communication · Computer Science · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Psychology · Social Psychology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access