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Liminality As a Lens on Social Meaning: a Cross-Variable Study of Gender in New Zealand English

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Liminality As a Lens on Social Meaning: a Cross-Variable Study of Gender in New Zealand English Liminality as a lens on social meaning: A cross-variable study of gender in New Zealand English Evan Hazenberg A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Abstract The variationist sociolinguistic enterprise has been successful in developing models of structural (i.e., language-internal) drivers of variation and change, but one of the barriers preventing the development of a parallel model accounting for social drivers is the difficulty in operationalising salience. Using a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews collected in Auckland, New Zealand between 2013 and 2015, this project examines the relationship between language variation and gendered identity, and proposes an analytical approach of liminality – of examining the linguistic practices of people who have crossed a culturally-reified category boundary – as a possible solution to the problem of identifying socially salient variables. The participants in this study are straight, queer, and transsexual native speakers of New Zealand English (NZE), representing two age groups that straddle the period of social change in the 1980s that saw a destabilisation of traditional gender roles in New Zealand. Variation in three linguistic systems is examined: adjectival modifiers (intensifiers and moderators), sibilants (/s/, /z/ and /ʃ/), and the vowels of NZE. The project uses established variationist and sociophonetic methodologies, as well as introducing a new metric for making comparisons across the vowel space as a whole. The findings show that speakers are able to encode their gendered identity across multiple variables, and that subtle linguistic signals can be used to affiliate with (or distance from) particular groups. The two most ‘distant’ groups are older straight men and younger [straight, queer, and transsexual] women, which this thesis argues is a reflection of the general societal criticism directed at young women by hegemonic masculinities. There is also evidence that the mainstreaming of queer identities in the wake of the 1986 decriminalisation of homosexuality has decreased the linguistic distance between straight and queer urban New Zealanders, demonstrating the relative rapidity with which social changes can be incorporated into the linguistic system. This study highlights the utility of studying variation across linguistic systems rather than in variables in isolation, and proposes a typology of variation based on the boundedness and dimensionality of the linguistic systems under investigation. The framework of liminality is found to be productive with respect to the role of gender in language variation, although future research will have to test whether this framework can be generalised to other dimensions of social identity that are perceived as categorical (e.g., ethnicity and heritage culture in immigrant communities). i ii As much as it may feel like a long and lonely road, a thesis is not a solitary endeavour; I am particularly indebted to the following people for their assistance and support over the past four years. Miriam Meyerhoff and Sasha Calhoun two truly wonderful supervisors Janet Holmes, Meredith Marra, Janet Attrill and Bernie Hambleton departmental support above and beyond Richard Arnold sage advice on statistics Education New Zealand generous financial support in the form of the New Zealand International Doctoral Research Scholarship (NZIDRS) 406ers past and present sanity and happy distractions as needed family and friends good humour, patience, and a willingness to listen to me go on about linguistics long after they’d stopped caring Erez Levon, Kevin Watson, Janet Holmes thorough and thoughtful examiners and most importantly, the participants who have supported my research for their time, commitment and generosity of spirit thank you iii iv Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iii List of Tables xiii List of Figures xv Some useful terms xvii Chapter one: Motivation 1.1 Introduction 1 1.1.1 So what is this thesis? 2 1.2 Some generalisations from sociolinguistics 3 1.2.1 Labov’s principles of change 4 1.2.1.1 Principle I 4 1.2.1.2 Principle Ia 4 1.2.1.3 Principle II 4 1.2.1.4 Gender paradox? 5 1.2.2 Salience 6 1.2.2.1 Indicators, markers, stereotypes 6 1.2.2.2 Salience as gradient 7 1.2.2.3 Salience in this project 8 1.2.3 Eckert’s three waves of variationist studies 8 1.2.3.1 Contextualising the third wave 9 1.3 Making meaning 11 1.3.1 Social constructionism and critical realism 11 1.3.2 Prototypes and stereotypes 13 1.3.3 Strategic essentialism 14 1.4 Bridging the linguistic and the social 15 1.4.1 Enregisterment 16 1.4.1.1 Asymmetries of competence and register complexity 16 1.4.1.2 Awareness and evaluation of difference 17 1.4.1.3 Evaluations are disseminated and embraced 18 1.4.2 Indexicality 19 1.4.3 Gender as performance 22 1.4.4 Trans identities as liminal 22 1.5 What this thesis aims to do 24 v Chapter two: Community 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 Social change(s) in New Zealand 28 2.2.1 Changing gender roles: masculinity 28 2.2.2 Changing gender roles: femininity 30 2.2.3 The Homosexual Law Reform bill 31 2.3 The Auckland Trans Corpus (ATC) 33 2.3.1 Designing the corpus 34 2.3.2 ATC participants 37 2.3.2.1 Straight participants 37 2.3.2.2 Queer participants 39 2.3.2.3 Trans participants 41 2.3.3 The ATC as a linguistic resource 44 Chapter three: Methods 3.1 Introduction 47 3.2 Data collection 47 3.2.1 The sociolinguistic interview 48 3.2.2 My role as interviewer 49 3.2.3 The structure of the interview 50 3.3 Identifying and working with extracts 51 3.3.1 Selecting extracts 52 3.3.2 Transcription 53 3.4 Corpus linguistics tools: looking for adjectives 53 3.5 Phonetic analysis tools 54 3.5.1 Automatic alignment tools 55 3.5.1.1 FAVE-extract 56 3.5.1.2 Shortcomings of FAVE 57 3.5.2 Semi-automatic tools for sibilant analysis 58 3.5.2.1 Praat 58 3.6 Analytical approaches 59 3.6.1 Descriptive statistics 59 3.6.1.1 ANOVA 59 3.6.1.2 Tukey’s HSD and homogeneous subsets 60 3.6.2 Multivariate analysis 60 3.7 Variable-specific particulars 62 Chapter four: Adjectival modifiers 4.1 Introduction 63 4.1.1 What are intensifiers? 63 vi 4.1.2 Intensifiers in NZE 65 4.1.3 Language change 66 4.1.4 Social difference 66 4.1.5 A note about downtoners and moderators 68 4.2 Methods 68 4.2.1 Finding adjectives in the interviews 68 4.2.2 Identifying appropriate adjective heads 69 4.2.3 Coding adjectives for analysis 70 4.2.3.1 Type of modification 71 4.2.3.2 Sentence polarity 71 4.2.3.3 Syntactic position 73 4.2.3.4 Type of adjective 73 4.2.3.5 Evaluative orientation of the adjective 74 4.2.4 Analysis 74 4.3 Intensifiers 76 4.3.1 Overall adjectival modification 76 4.3.2 Distributional results 78 4.3.3 Statistical models of intensifier choice 80 4.3.3.1 Really 80 4.3.3.2 Very 82 4.3.3.3 So 83 4.4 Moderators 84 4.4.1 Distribution 84 4.4.1.1 Kind of/sort of 85 4.4.1.2 Quite 85 4.4.1.3 Litotes 86 4.4.1.4 A (little) bit and enough 86 4.5 Trans speakers 86 4.6 Discussion 89 4.6.1 Relative (structural) stability of the system 89 4.6.2 Age as a perceptual lens 90 4.6.3 Intensifiers as a gendered resource 91 Chapter five: Sibilants 5.1 Introduction 93 5.1.1 Sibilants 95 5.1.2 What this chapter aims to do 96 5.2 Spectral moments 96 5.2.1 First moment: Centre of Gravity 97 5.2.2 Second moment: Standard Deviation 97 5.2.3 Third moment: Skewness 99 vii 5.2.4 Fourth moment: Kurtosis 99 5.2.5 Fricative moments and gender 99 5.2.6 What are CofG and Skewness actually measuring? 99 5.3 Why sibilants? 100 5.3.1 Sibilants, sex, and gender 101 5.3.2 [s] and sexuality 102 5.3.3 [s] and trans identities 103 5.3.4 A quick note on voicing 104 5.3.5 Summary of previous findings 105 5.4 Methods 106 5.4.1 Correcting for biological differences? 107 5.4.2 Tokens 107 5.4.2.1 /s/ and /ʃ/ 108 5.4.2.2 /s/ and /z/ 108 5.4.3 Analytical approach 109 5.4.4 A note about independence 109 5.5 /s/ 110 5.5.1 /s/: Distribution 110 5.5.1.1 Means 112 5.5.1.2 Homogeneous subsets 113 5.5.2 /s/: Statistical modeling 115 5.5.2.1 Linguistic constraints 117 5.5.2.2 Social constraints 117 5.5.3 Discussion: /s/ as a site for gendered identity 118 5.6 /z/ 121 5.6.1 /z/: Distribution 123 5.6.1.1 Means 123 5.6.1.2 Homogeneous subsets 126 5.6.2 /z/: Statistical modeling 126 5.6.2.1 Linguistic constraints 126 5.6.2.2 Social constraints 128 5.6.3 Discussion: /z/ as a site for gendered identity 129 5.7 /ʃ/ 130 5.7.1 /ʃ/: Distribution 132 5.7.1.1 Means 132 5.7.1.2 Homogeneous subsets 133 5.7.2 /ʃ/: Statistical modeling 135 5.7.3 Discussion: /ʃ/ as a site for gendered identity 136 5.8 General discussion of sibilants in NZE 136 5.8.1 A model of social meaning for sibilants 138 viii Chapter six: Vowels 6.1 Introduction 141 6.1.1 Roadmap for this chapter 142 6.2 Methods 142 6.2.1 Automatic vowel measurement 142 6.2.2 Output from FAVE-extract 143 6.2.3 Outliers 145 6.2.4 Vowel normalisation 146 6.2.5 Total number of vowel tokens 149 6.2.6 What to compare: the Cartesian vowel plot 149 6.2.6.1 Euclidean Distance 150 6.2.6.2 Scale 152 6.2.6.3 A note on the use of Hertz 153 6.2.6.4 Analysis of gendered production 153 6.3 Findings 155 6.3.1 NZE vowel space generally 155 6.3.2 A closer look at the vowel space 156 6.3.2.1 Monophthongs 158 6.3.2.2 Diphthongs 159 6.3.2.3 Summary of the vowels for analysis 160 6.3.3 Stable vowels 161 6.3.3.1 FLEECE 162 6.3.3.2 START 163 6.3.3.3 GOOSE 164 6.3.3.4 LOT 165 6.3.4 Vowels showing a clear trend 167 6.3.4.1 FACE and GOAT 167 6.3.4.1.1 FACE 167 6.3.4.1.2 GOAT 169 6.3.4.1.3 Some observations on
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