Sociophonetics and sexual orientation in the Wellington region

The phonetic correlates of women’s sexual orientation have long been debated by researchers, with research conducted on a variety of languages including English (e.g. Barron-Lutzross, 2018; Waksler, 2001), Cantonese (Wong and Tu, 2019), German, Portuguese, and Italian (Kachel et al., 2017), and in different dialect regions such as Northern California (Podesva and van Hofwegen, 2015), Minnesota (Munson et al., 2006), and London (Lawrence, 2014, cited in Levon, 2021). These studies often compare the speech of queer women to that of heterosexual women and their results vary by language, methodology, and dialect. The present study investigates the phonetic production of 9 self-identified queer women from the Wellington region of New Zealand. The term queer women is used here as an umbrella term for participants, who identify as cis gender LGBTQIA+ women, and as gender fluid or bigender. All participants describe attraction to people of their same gender and/or to multiple genders. This study aims to address the relationship between measures of queer identity and phonetic variation in three different laboratory speech tasks: a sentence reading task to ensure comparable phonetic materials were obtained from all speakers, a response elicitation about queer experiences in New Zealand to create a queer conversational space (see Levon, 2011), and an interactive map task to simulate instruction and collaboration with a partner. The phonetic variables in this study are average pitch and pitch range, as well as vowel dispersion and use of creaky voice. The initial stage of this research involved interviews with members of local queer communities to record presentations of queerness and gender identity in the Wellington region. Measures used to assess factors influencing the phonetic presentation of queer identity include self reports of identity but also variables elicited through surveys such as concealment motivation, identity uncertainty, and internalized homonegativity (see Mohr and Kendra, 2011). In addition, I also include measures from a secondary survey which explores feelings of connectedness and membership within queer communities (see Lin and Israel, 2012). These measures gauge the impact of community support and engagement on presentations of queer identities. This research contributes to the study of social identity and phonetic variation, including how linguistic variables can be used in the construction of queer identities in New Zealand.