Perceptions of Gender and Femininity Based on Language: Implications for Transgender Communication Therapy

Abstract

Recent research presents a picture of diminishing gender differences in language. Two experiments examined whether language use can predict perceptions of gender and femininity; one included male and female speakers telling a personal narrative, the other also included male-to-female transgender speakers and analyzed an oral picture description. In each experiment, raters read transcribed samples before judging the gender and rating the femininity of the speaker. Only number of T-units, words per T-unit, dependent clauses per T-unit, and personal pronouns per T-unit emerged as different between gender groups. As none of the variables were strongly correlated with perceptual judgments, regression analysis was used to determine how combinations of linguistic variables predict female/feminine ratings. Results from these two studies demonstrate that gender-related differences in language use for these two contexts are limited, and that any relationship of language to perceptions of gender and femininity is complex and multivariate. This information calls into question the utility of training key language features in transgender communication therapy.