230105 Investigating Sounds of Gender (S) (WiSe 2025/2026)

In this seminar, we will investigate the relationship between pronunciation patterns in English and the social factors of gender and sexuality, which is part of the discipline called sociophonetics. Sociophonetics is a research field that combines approaches and methods from sociolinguistics (in this case: language & gender) and phonetics & phonology.
Students will be introduced to the methodological basics of sociophonetics as well as interesting research that can shed light on the relation between speech production (e.g. vowels or voice quality) and the identity aspects of gender/sexuality. Students will get to know important terminology, theoretical concepts and methodologies for the investigation of linguistic variation that focuses on pronunciation. Also, we will take a close look at empirical work in linguistics in general as students will have to conduct their own sociophonetic analyses (e.g. with phonetics software like Praat) as part of a mini group project to complete this course.

Requirements for participation, required level

Having completed the other elements of the Basis3 module (i.e. "Introduction to English Linguistics" (Basis3.1) and "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" (Basis3.2)) before attending this seminar is highly recommended!

Bibliography

e.g.

Angouri, J. & J. Baxter (2021). The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality. London: Routledge.
Di Paolo, M. & M. Yaeger-Dror (2011). Sociophonetics. A Student's Guide. London: Routledge.
Ehrlich, S., M. Meyerhoff & J. Holmes (2014). The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Second Edition. Chichester: Wiley/Blackwell.
Kendall, T. & V. Fridland (2021). Sociophonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, E. R. (2010). Sociophonetics: An Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave.