User:Utopian9/Language and gender

Transgender linguistics[edit]
While much work on language and gender has focused on the differences between people of binary genders (men and women) and cisgender people, with the rise of social constructionist models of language and gender scholarship, there has been a turn towards explorations of how individuals of all genders perform masculinity and femininity (as well as other gendered identities) through language. Within the context of US and English-speaking trans and gender diverse communities, linguistic features at various levels, whether phonetic features (e.g., pitch and /s/ production), lexical items (e.g., body part names and pronouns), and semiotic systems (e.g., linguistic and aesthetic style), have been shown to be important resources for naming trans identities and for constructing and communicating these identities to the world. Sociophonetic research within trans communities has explored how the gendered voice is constructed, performed, and heard. Lexical analyses have shown how labels and pronouns have allowed non-normative gender individuals to claim linguistic agency over their own experience of gender as well as to challenge and reclaim pathological terminology ascribed by doctors and psychologists. (See LGBT linguistics).

Many transgender people also undergo specific voice therapies (voice feminization for transgender women and voice masculinization for transgender men) as part of their transition.