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Article published In: Journal of Language and Sexuality
Vol. 14:2 (2025) ► pp.228–261

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Analyzing acoustic correlates of gender presentation in the lesbian community

ORCiD logo with link | Boston University, USA
Published online: 18 August 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.24023.sul
Abstract
An emerging avenue for research is the relationship between gender presentation — individual expression of gender through aspects of behavior and appearance — and acoustic correlates of speech within sexual minorities (e.g. . 2004. ‘Harsh’ SoMA vs ‘Beige’ Castro: The cross-modal construction of contrasting femininities in queer San Francisco. Language and Communication 991: 107–128.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2017. Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/. Language in Society 46(3): 339–370. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The present paper examines whether gender presentation within a population of lesbian women correlates with significant differences across phonetic variables typically described as varying across genders. The study finds that, as speakers rate their gender presentation more masculine, their mean F0 decreases, average change in F0 lowers and percentage of creak increases; however, there are no differences in center of gravity of /s/ across participants. These results support the idea that the construction of non-normative identity through language is a type of bricolage in which signs that index certain social identities do not necessarily co-occur in speech.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Indexing masculinity and femininity
    • 2.2Indexing lesbian identity
    • 2.3Butch, femme and intra-community variation
    • 2.4Bricolage
    • 2.5Present study
  • 3.Research question and methods
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Fundamental frequency
    • 4.2F variation (monotonicity)
    • 4.3Percentage of creak
    • 4.4Center of gravity of /s/
    • 4.5Summary
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Phonetic results
    • 5.2Accounting for individual differences
    • 5.3Limitations and future directions
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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