Nonstandard Plural Noun Phrase Agreement as an Index of Masculinity

A computational approach for modeling the indexical field / Uma abordagem computacional para a modelagem de campos indexicais

“…On the other hand, differently from the initial hypotheses, speakers were not perceived as having more friends, as being friendlier, more extroverted, less intelligent and less feminine (in the case of female speakers) or more masculine (in the case of male speakers) when listened to in their retroflex-guise. 11 Mendes (2016), in a study about perceptions on nominal number agreement, did not observe differences in the friendliness scale either but, differently from this study, observed significant correlations for effeminacy and intelligence according to the use of the standard or nonstandard variant. The sexuality dimension can probably be accounted for due to the fact that, in Mendes's study, all speakers were males and the scale measured how "effeminate" they sounded.…”

“…For example, it explains why not all speakers and social groups react to the same variant homogeneously; why the term articulate, although favored by the tap, was also frequently attributed to retroflex stimuli; or why the correlation between /r/ and level of education does not extend to the scale of intelligence, as seen in other studies (e.g. MENDES, 2016;CAMPBELL-KIBLER, 2006). On the other hand, sociolinguists still do not have a method to compute and reliably replicate or compare such findings across studies, as is the case, for instance, with the variable rule analyses of speech production data.…”

Diphthongized (en) and the indexation of femininity and Paulistanity

“…Figure 2 shows that Robson tends to be rated as very masculine, irrespective of the guise -his ratings tend to be very high in the scale of masculinity and very low in the scale of femininity. As described in the Methods section above, Robson's voice had already been used in another perception study (MENDES 2016), in which the guises differed in terms of NP number agreement. While Robson was consistently rated as more masculine-sounding than the other males in that experiment, he was also rated as less masculine-sounding in the standard NP-guise (that is, when plural was marked in all NP elements).…”

“…8 Lucas's and Robson's speech had been previously used by Mendes (2016) in a perception study of noun-phrase (NP) number agreement focusing on perceived gender and sexuality. Lucas was evaluated by the interviewers who worked on the project (graduate and undergraduate students of Linguistics at the University of São Paulo) as the most effeminate-sounding man in the sample, while Robson was evaluated as the most masculine-sounding one.…”

“…Lucas was evaluated by the interviewers who worked on the project (graduate and undergraduate students of Linguistics at the University of São Paulo) as the most effeminate-sounding man in the sample, while Robson was evaluated as the most masculine-sounding one. In light of Mendes's (2016) findings -that these men are perceived as less masculine-sounding in their nonstandard plural NP-guise -their speech is also used here, so that comparisons and generalizations can be made, here and in future work. Janaína and Ariane were picked because their ages at the time they were recorded (28 and 36, respectively) are similar to those of Lucas (25) and Robson (31).…”