Linking gender, sexuality, and affect: The linguistic and social patterning of phrase-final posttonic lengthening

IF 1.4 2区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Language Variation and Change Pub Date : 2020-07-01 DOI:10.1017/S0954394520000095

Lewis Esposito

{"title":"Linking gender, sexuality, and affect: The linguistic and social patterning of phrase-final posttonic lengthening","authors":"Lewis Esposito","doi":"10.1017/S0954394520000095","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper furthers our understanding of the social forces driving prosodic variation by reporting on production and perception studies of phrase-final posttonic lengthening in American English. Building on past research showing gender-based variation in the production of phrase-final lengthening, I show that this gender effect surfaces only when comparing straight men and straight women. Gay men and straight women lengthen their phrase-final posttonic syllables equally, and both groups do so more than straight men. A matched-guise social-perception experiment shows that listeners associate increased lengthening not only with femininity and male gayness, but with expressive affect. I suggest that the link between increased lengthening and expressive affect is forged iconically and that this link underlies the gender and sexuality patterns observed in the production study. What surfaces from this work theoretically is how variability in expressions of affect may drive correlations between gender/sexuality-based categories and linguistic variants.","PeriodicalId":46949,"journal":{"name":"Language Variation and Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0954394520000095","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Variation and Change","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394520000095","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 4

Abstract

Abstract This paper furthers our understanding of the social forces driving prosodic variation by reporting on production and perception studies of phrase-final posttonic lengthening in American English. Building on past research showing gender-based variation in the production of phrase-final lengthening, I show that this gender effect surfaces only when comparing straight men and straight women. Gay men and straight women lengthen their phrase-final posttonic syllables equally, and both groups do so more than straight men. A matched-guise social-perception experiment shows that listeners associate increased lengthening not only with femininity and male gayness, but with expressive affect. I suggest that the link between increased lengthening and expressive affect is forged iconically and that this link underlies the gender and sexuality patterns observed in the production study. What surfaces from this work theoretically is how variability in expressions of affect may drive correlations between gender/sexuality-based categories and linguistic variants.

查看原文本刊更多论文

将性别、性和情感联系起来：短语最后的后调延长的语言和社会模式

摘要本文通过报道美国英语中短语词尾后调延长的产生和感知研究，进一步加深了我们对驱动韵律变化的社会力量的理解。基于过去的研究表明，在短语词尾加长的产生中，基于性别的差异，我发现这种性别效应只有在比较直男和直女时才会显现出来。男同性恋和异性恋女性同样延长短语的最后一个后调音节，而且这两组人都比异性恋男性做得更多。一项伪装匹配的社会感知实验表明，听众不仅将加长与女性气质和男性同性恋联系在一起，还将其与表达情感联系在一起。我认为，延长和表达情感之间的联系是形象化的，这种联系是在生产研究中观察到的性别和性模式的基础。从理论上讲，这项工作揭示了情感表达的可变性如何驱动基于性别/性取向的类别和语言变体之间的相关性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Language Variation and Change Multiple-

CiteScore

2.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Language Variation and Change is the only journal dedicated exclusively to the study of linguistic variation and the capacity to deal with systematic and inherent variation in synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Sociolinguistics involves analysing the interaction of language, culture and society; the more specific study of variation is concerned with the impact of this interaction on the structures and processes of traditional linguistics. Language Variation and Change concentrates on the details of linguistic structure in actual speech production and processing (or writing), including contemporary or historical sources.