Analyzing acoustic correlates of gender presentation in the lesbian community

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. Calder 2024 , Zimman 2017 ). 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 F 0 decreases, average change in F 0 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.