week five

Question 1

embodied linguistics

Answer 1

• approaches to looking at how the whole body communicates
• the voice, style and self-presentation, discourses about the body, embodies motion and action, mediation of the body through material objects

Question 2

how we give meaning to different styles, gestures and body parts

Answer 2

• the sperm “actively” working and moving towards the egg that just “sits and waits there”
• eyelashes are characterized as feminine, muscles (sometimes certain ones) characterized as masculine

Question 3

how is gender embedded in words through lexical, social and referential gender?

Answer 3

• lexical: nouns that carry semantic feature of “male” or “female” (ie. man/woman, mother/father, mrs./mr.)
• social: a matter of entrenched social stereotypes that tie certain role scripts to women and men (nurse=women, farmer=men; even when either can be both)
• referential: a matter of whom a particular personal noun actually refers to in a given context (ie. chairman)

Question 4

what are the complicating factors in understanding what people consider a “male or female” voice?

Answer 4

• the lesson of linguistic diversity
• the lesson of socialization
• the lesson of intersectionality
• the lesson of agency

Question 5

the lesson of linguistic diversity

Answer 5

• different languages and cultures index gender phonetically in different ways
• ie. it was british english men who were said to make the most use of creak in the beginning of creak studies, but today, it is young american women who are most strongly associated with creak

Question 6

the lesson of socialization

Answer 6

• many gender differences in the voice are acquired in childhood
• due to exposure to deterministic interpretations of “gender voices” during language acquisition

Question 7

the lesson of intersectionality

Answer 7

• gender can never be examined alone but must be
  understood as intersecting with age, class, race and ethnicity, and other elements of the self
• gender differences in voices of peoples from glasgow people reveals an intersection with class

Question 8

the lesson of agency

Answer 8

• speakers have the ability to consciously manipulate the gendered characteristics of voices
• voice training for transgender people

Question 9

what can studying trans speakers teach us about voices and gender more generally?

Answer 9

• the way people speak is not solely defined by their physiology, but it can also be affected by the environment (ie. socialization) and their agency (like transgender people deciding to use voice training therapy, testosterone, etc. for voice)