The RAINBO Connection:
Vocal construction of nonbinary gender identities
Jacq Jones | jacq.jones@pg.canterbury.ac.nz | https://jacq.landMethods
Participants (recruitment ongoing)

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Nonbinary: An umbrella term encompassing

Recorded AudiovisualInterviews with Nonbinaryand Binary Orators“Gender… is not something residing inside the human, but arelational concept, just like ‘big’ cannot be ‘big’ unless there issomething other than ‘big’, that makes it so.”1❑Digital corpus of audio
recordings and selfies❑

Fully transcribed6Recorded by participants5
Conversational partner(s) & topicsof their own choosing
Emphasis on breadth of contexts
over quantity of recordings

Stereotypes and descriptions about features of the “gendered voice”❑

Time-aligned78

abound, both acoustic23 and social4.

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Designed for accessibility
and future expansion

Research Question:❑

Suitable for analyses on

Given their gender identity exists outside of
expected vocal norms, how do nonbinary
speakers negotiate vocal production
and interlocutor assumption topresent gender identity?

Interview Recordings▪

The RAINBO Corpus

genders outside of the individual binary categoriesof “man” and “woman.”

Dialect: New Zealand English
Gender: Nonbinary (6); Binary (6)Age: 18-20 (9); 44-52 (3)“In the Wild” Recordings▪

Introduction

Discussion of each recording
Reflections on language use
Responses to questions about
gender, history, family, andpresentation

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Pitch
Phoneme Variation
Discourse Analysis
Comparative Statistics
Ethnography

Pitch Analysis: In Their Own Words
1. Persona Projection

2. Listener Expectation

NB03: Nonbinary, 47
Red and Blue are interlocuters of equal standing,Green is a hired gardener.

NB07: Agender, 21Light Red are known interlocutors (3+ years),
Red is a new peer.

“I’ve always done this thing which I’ve
always called bloke mode . Which is like
especially you know going into hardware
shops and things and you know you justgo and t~ yeah r~ yeah right mate I knowwhat you’re talking about yeah yeah”“But when I'm around him it's always like. I always try to . I always like . self
conscious I’m very self conscious about
the way I sound and what I say […]when I first met him I tried to keep myvoice very . I don’t know low orwhatever”

Guide to Graphs▪

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Above each plot is the participant’s code, selfidentified gender, and age.

Each plot shows pitch data from a single participant
over multiple conversations.
Recordings contain the participant’s voice only;
periods of silence are smoothed.

Below each plot is a relevant quote from theinterview. ~ indicates hesitations . indicates pauses.

3. Paralinguistic Factors
NB02: Femaleish, 20
Blue and Red are subtle looks, Green is an“evening” look.

“it's not that you know putting on
makeup is feminine it's it's that you
ha~ it's that not putting on makeup is
automatically not feminine”

Conclusions
Low Pitch may be evoked as a marker ofstereotypical masculinity…

…But is not intrinsic to a masculine
presentation.

1. As a shortcut to other masculine stereotypes, 3. Highly gendered paralinguistic factors (suchsuch as gardening competence.
2. As a way to meet interlocutor expectation of(low-pitched) voice.

as makeup) may “carry the load” of gender
projection and allow for greater flexibility inproduction.

Bibliography1 Gherardi, S. (1995). | 2 Davies, S., & Goldberg, J. M. (2006). | 3 Daly, N., & Warren, P. (2001). | 4 Bayard, D., & Krishnayya, S. (2001). | 5 Gnevsheva, K. (2015). | 6 Sloetjes, H., & Wittenburg, P. (2008). 7Fromont, R., & Hay, J. (2012). | 8 Talkin, D. (2015) | I would like to acknowledge the patience and guidance of my supervisors Jen Hay, Vica Papp, and Erin Harrington, and the support of faculty and my fellow students at theLinguistic Department and NZILBB | I must also acknowledge my research participants, without whom this work would not be possible | A full bibliography and additional resources can be found by scanning the QR card below.

Language Data Analysis Summer School
January 29th, 2019

Full Bibliography:
1 Gherardi, S. (1995). Gender, symbolism and organizational cultures. Sage.
2 Davies, S., & Goldberg, J. M. (2006). Clinical aspects of transgender speechfeminization and masculinization. International Journal of Transgenderism, 9(34), 167-196.
3 Daly, N., & Warren, P. (2001). Pitching it differently in New Zealand English: Speakersex and intonation patterns. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(1), 85-96.
4 Bayard, D., & Krishnayya, S. (2001). Gender, expletive use, and context: Male andfemale expletive use in structured and unstructured conversation among New
Zealand university students. Women and Language, 24(1), 1.
5 Gnevsheva, K. (2015). Variation in passing for a native speaker: Accentedness insecond language speakers of English in production and perception.
6 Sloetjes, H., & Wittenburg, P. (2008). Annotation by category-ELAN and ISO DCR.
In 6th international Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC2008).
7 Fromont, R., & Hay, J. (2012). LaBB-CAT: An annotation store. In Proceedings of theAustralasian Language Technology Association Workshop 2012 (pp. 113-117).
8 Talkin, D. (2015). REAPER: Robust Epoch And Pitch EstimatoR. Github:https://github. com/google/REAPER.