Article published In:
Journal of Language and SexualityVol. 8:1 (2019) ► pp.1–29
Performing graysexuality
A segmental and prosodic analysis of three voices employed in the construction of the graysexual self
While recent work in sociophonetics has focused on the speech of gay men (Gaudio 1994; Podesva 2007; Podesva, Roberts & Campbell-Kibler 2002), lesbian women (Camp 2009; Van Borsel Vandaele & Corthals 2013), and transgender people (Zimman 2017a), the speech styles of asexual individuals remain understudied. This study analyzes an
interview with a graysexual and homoromantic cisgender student at a research university in California, examining the segmental and
prosodic characteristics of three voices he uses to construct and position his graysexual identity: a questioning voice, a
judgmental voice, and a non-desiring voice. The analysis finds that the questioning voice is characterized by decreased speech
rate, high F0, and modal phonation; the judgmental voice, by low F0; and the non-desiring voice, by low F0, narrow F0 range, low
intensity, reduced gesture, flat facial expression, and a centralized vowel space. The results emphasize the importance of
stylistic reticence to the construction of graysexuality.
Keywords: asexuality, sociophonetics, prosody, constructed dialogue, sexual refusal
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Language and asexuality
- 2.Background: Interview context
- 3.Questioning, judgmental, and non-desiring voices as resources for graysexual identity construction
- 3.1Questioning voice
- 3.2Judgmental voice
- 3.3Non-desiring voice
- 4.Comparison and discussion
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
- Transcription conventions
-
References
References (32)
Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1): 38–59. 
Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bucholtz, Mary & Hall, Kira. 2004a. Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society 33(4): 469–515.
. 2004b. Language and identity. In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Alessandro Duranti (ed), 369–394. Hoboken: Blackwell.
. 2008. All of the above: New coalitions in sociocultural linguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4): 401–431.
Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don (eds). 2006. The Language and Sexuality Reader. London: Routledge.
Camp, Margaret. 2009. Japanese Lesbian Speech: Sexuality, Gender Identity, and Language. PhD dissertation, University of Arizona.
Canning, Dominique A. 2015. Queering asexuality: Asexual-inclusion in queer spaces. McNair Scholars Research Journal 8(1): 55–74.
Chafe, Wallace. 1993. Prosodic and functional units of language. In Talking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research, Jane A. Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds), 33–42. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Du Bois, John, Schuetze-Coburn, Stephan, Cumming, Susanna & Paolino, Danae. 1993. Outline of discourse transcription. In Talking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research, Jane A. Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds), 45–89. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Du Bois, John & Kärkkäinen, Elise. 2012. Taking a stance on emotion: Affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction. Text and Talk: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse and Communication Studies 32(4): 433–451.
Eckert, Penelope. 1996. Vowels and nail polish: The emergence of linguistic style in the preadolescent heterosexual marketplace. In Gender and Belief Systems, Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim & Melinda Chen (eds), 183–190. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Gaudio, Rudolf. 1994. Sounding gay: Pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men. American Speech 69(1): 30–57.
Ginoza, Mary Kame & Miller, Tristan. 2014. The 2014 AVEN community census: Preliminary findings, 1–19. <[URL]> (March 11, 2018)
Goodwin, Marjorie, Cekaite, Asta & Goodwin, Charles. 2012. Emotion as stance. In Emotion in Interaction, Marja-Leena Sorjonen & Anssi Peräklyä (eds), 16–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kitzinger, Celia & Frith, Hannah. 1999. Just say no? The use of conversation analysis in developing a feminist perspective on sexual refusal. Discourse & Society 10(3): 293–316.
Kulick, Don. 2003. Language and desire. In The Handbook of Language and Gender, Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds), 119–141. Hoboken: Blackwell.
Levon, Erez. 2016. Conflicted selves: Language, religion and same-sex desire in Israel. In Language, Sexuality, and Power: Studies in Intersectional Sociolinguistics, Erez Levon & Ronald Beline Mendes (eds), 215–241. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Milani, Tommaso M. 2013. Are ‘queers’ really ‘queer’? Language, identity and same-sex desire in a South African online community. Discourse & Society 24(5): 615–633.
Pacho, Agata. 2017. Cake is better than sex: AVEN and asexuality. In Sex in the Digital Age, Paul Nixon & Isabel Düsterhöft (eds), 134–146. New York: Routledge.
Piller, Ingrid & Takahashi, Kimie. 2006. A passion for English: Desire and the language market. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 561: 59–83.
Podesva, Robert. 2007. Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(4): 478–504.
Podesva, Robert J., Roberts, Sarah J. & Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2002. Sharing resources and indexing meanings in the production of gay styles. In Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert J. Podesva, Sarah J. Roberts & Andrew Wong (eds), 175–189. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Pratt, Teresa. 2018. Embodying toughness: LOT-raising, /l/ velarization, and retracted articulatory setting. (Paper presented at the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Salt Lake City, Utah)
Reddy, Sravana & Stanford, James. 2015. Toward completely automated vowel extraction: Introducing DARLA. Linguistics Vanguard 1(1): 15–28.
Rosenfelder, Ingrid, Fruehwald, Joe, Evanini, Keelan & Yuan, Jiahong. 2014. FAVE (Forced Alignment and Vowel Extraction) Program Suite. <[URL]> (November 19, 2018)
Shiau, Hong-Chi. 2015. Lavender Mandarin in the sites of desire: Situating linguistic performances among Taiwanese gay men. Language & Communication 421: 1–10.
Thomas, Erik R. & Kendall, Tyler. 2007. NORM: The vowel normalization and plotting suite. <[URL]> (November 19, 2018)
Trester, Anna Marie. 2009. Discourse marker ‘oh’ as a means for realizing the identity potential of constructed dialogue in interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13(2): 147–168.
Van Borsel, John, Vandaele, Jana & Corthals, Paul. 2013. Pitch and pitch variation in lesbian women. Journal of Voice 27(5): 656.e13–656.e16.
Zimman, Lal. 2017a. Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/. Language in Society 46(3): 339–370.
. 2017b. Operationalizing stance: Affective stance in a pervasively creaky transgender speaker. (Paper presented at the 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Austin, Texas)
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Brown, Gwendolyn, Andreea Cheva, Megan Fraser & Robert J. Zeglin
2023. Asexuality: a content analysis of sex therapy journals. Psychology & Sexuality 14:1 ► pp. 17 ff. 
Fine, Julia Coombs
Jones, Lucy
Motschenbacher, Heiko
Mattfeldt, Anna
2020. Marginalisierung in der Marginalität?. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 2020:73 ► pp. 213 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.