Abstract This experimental sociolinguistic study investigates implicit attitudes relating to female football commentators. Several high-profile sports-media figures have claimed that women's voices are “too high-pitched” for commentary on men's football, a domain in which traditional, heteronormative gender relations remain especially dominant. With this critique in mind, we conducted a social perception experiment using voices artificially manipulated for pitch to investigate the interaction of pitch and gender stereotypes in this context. Contrary to the male-centred meta-discourse surrounding female commentators, our results show that listeners actually judge female commentators with lower-pitched voices less favourably compared with higher-pitched female voices. Male listeners, in particular, prefer gender-typical voices and male voices generally. These results support previous claims about the influence of stored stereotypes on the social evaluation of speech, how evaluations are dependent upon the specific gendered dynamics of a given domain, and the pervasiveness of a “double-bind” that female commentators are faced with.

Physical education (PE) lessons can be heteronormative and exclusionary spaces for LGBTQIA + students, with their experiences often marked by homophobia and discrimination. This paper adopts an int...

This year’s annual BAAL Language, Gender and Sexuality SIG event is focussed on the connection between the notion of affect and the field of language

Cambridge Core - English Language and Linguistics: General Interest - Discourse and Queer Sinophone Male Identities

We live in a moment where feminism is “done” everywhere we turn—be it online or offline, on billboards or on television, in music or in the press. In this moment, however, we are also experiencing ...

While research into the interaction of language and sexuality is becoming increasingly widespread, there is still little sociophonetic sexuality work that considers female speakers and much of the pre...

We call on all trans-inclusive feminist academics and educators to sign this statement: ‘Not In Our Name’ We are non-trans feminist academics and educators. We write in support of trans rights, tran...

British Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference 2025 at the University of Glasgow

Shop for Baal Sig 2025 at https://mmu.estore.flywire.com. <div class="redactor-editor"><p><strong>Marking milestones in Language, Gender and Sexuality Studies: Easter 2025, Manchester Metropolitan Uni...

Conference on Queer Identities in Contemporary China

The British Association of Applied Linguistics&#8217; Language, Gender and Sexuality Special Interest Group (BAAL LGaS SIG)&#8217;s annual event for 2024 w

Research shows how the group once portrayed as a respected source of advice began to be seen by some outlets as a danger to young people.

The British Association of Applied Linguistics&#8217; Language, Gender and Sexuality Special Interest Group (BAAL LGaS SIG)&#8217;s annual event for 2024 w

This article examines representations of Mermaids, a charity that supports trans young people and their families, in the British press. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, we identif...