The style shifting of /s/ among men beauty vloggers on YouTube

Zhaoxi Yan

Presenter Title/Affiliation

University of Edinburgh

Start Date

23-5-2021 2:30 PM

Event Name

Panel discussion

Panel Number

22

Panel Chair Name

Ryan Redmond

Zoom URL to Join

https://ciis.zoom.us/j/98467066966

Zoom Meeting ID

984 6706 6966

Abstract

This paper studies the interaction between sociophonetic variant /s/ in American English and visual transformation of men beauty vloggers on YouTube. Sibilant fricative /s/ in English is a well-studied index of gender identity. Men beauty vloggers are men who apply makeup to themselves in their vlogs in order to teach makeup skills or to recommend beauty products. In their makeup tutorial videos, they usually transform from relative masculine looks to rather feminine looks. Therefore it is expected that the visual transformation would correlate with changes of their productions of /s/. This paper selects 15 sample videos of 3 vloggers and collects the Center of Gravity of their /s/. Both intra-speaker style shifts and inter-speaker differences in /s/ are found, which suggests that besides gender identity, /s/ is also related to contextualized personae building among the community of men beauty vloggers.

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May 23rd, 2:30 PM May 23rd, 3:00 PM

The style shifting of /s/ among men beauty vloggers on YouTube

This paper studies the interaction between sociophonetic variant /s/ in American English and visual transformation of men beauty vloggers on YouTube. Sibilant fricative /s/ in English is a well-studied index of gender identity. Men beauty vloggers are men who apply makeup to themselves in their vlogs in order to teach makeup skills or to recommend beauty products. In their makeup tutorial videos, they usually transform from relative masculine looks to rather feminine looks. Therefore it is expected that the visual transformation would correlate with changes of their productions of /s/. This paper selects 15 sample videos of 3 vloggers and collects the Center of Gravity of their /s/. Both intra-speaker style shifts and inter-speaker differences in /s/ are found, which suggests that besides gender identity, /s/ is also related to contextualized personae building among the community of men beauty vloggers.

https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/lavlang/2021/sunday/27