Voice quality in contemporary Scotland: perception, gender, & identity

This project will take a combination of methodological approaches, integrating acoustic phonetic measurement with experimental speech perception and sociolinguistics. The Master's year will focus on perceptions of phonation, investigating how phonation interacts with other cues to speaker gender (fundamental frequency, vowel formants), to affect listener judgments of speaker characteristics. In this perception study, Scottish listeners will be presented with stimuli originally spoken by the same speaker, but with acoustic measures of phonation and cues to speaker gender digitally manipulated, then be asked to evaluate characteristics of the speaker on Likert scale responses.

The PhD study will contain two main parts. The first will investigate voice quality production in speech data collected from a sample of native Scottish English speakers, with 36 from Edinburgh and the surrounding areas and 36 from Glasgow and the surrounding areas, stratified by social class, age and gender. This will be investigated by a linked perception and acoustic study.

The second will study a smaller number of LGBT+ speakers, with a focus on transgender speakers, from Edinburgh, Glasgow and the surrounding areas. Participants will be recorded speaking to a series of interlocutors of different identities and different relationships to the speaker - each LGBT+ speaker will speak to at least one other person with one LGBT+ friend of a similar identity, one LGBT+ friend of a different identity, one non-LGBT+ friend and one non-LGBT+ stranger. Building on the previous perception and production studies, this data will then be investigated acoustically, to examine how LGBT+ speakers use phonation to express, construct and present gender and sexual identities.
Given that voice quality is an under-researched field within sociolinguistics (e.g. Thomas 2011, Podesva & Callier 2015), this study will contribute to the broader discipline by investigating the relationship between acoustic measurements, perception and identity. It also has specific applications beyond academic; I hope to make links with speech and language therapists to investigate how this research is applicable in the diagnosis and treatment of voice disorders as well as in feminizing and masculinizing voice and communication therapy.

The University advises its doctoral researchers to undertake 2 weeks of skills development training per year (or equivalent for part-time students). This skills development training may include attendance at workshops offered by the Graduate School, or by the University's Researcher Development unit, the Learning and Teaching Centre, by the School or subject area, or external organisations. There are opportunities to apply for funding should students have specific skills needs or if they have an idea for a collaborative training initiative. Skills Development also encompasses a whole range of non-formalised activities, including attending visiting speaker seminars; writing and presenting a conference paper; attending a conference; undertaking Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) training; helping organise a symposium or a conference; working with e-Sharp, etc.