UCLA

This thesis examines metalinguistic commentaries of trans-feminine individuals about voice and voice modification as a site of language ideological work. Language ideologies are positioned, multiple, and mediating views on language and language use (Kroskrity 2004). Based on data collected through a recorded semi-structured conversation and from an online forum dedicated to trans voice modification, I illustrate how some trans-feminine speakers construe the pursuit of voice modification as affirming while simultaneously scrutinizing the practice of ascribing gender to someone based on their voice. Furthermore, I explore how these commentaries tacitly characterize the “cisgender listening subject” (Calder 2021) – an ideological position which apprehends voices through the logics of a binary gender system – and interrogate the listening practices of this subject. These discursive moves reflect the entanglement of creativity and discipline in voice practices (Weidman 2006), including voice modification, emerging here within and between views of gender as self-determined, on the one hand, and of gender as intersubjectively constituted, on the other.