Voice Quality: A Strategy for Gender Stylisation

Abstract

This paper is situated in the body of linguistic forms and identity construction which investigates how women and men in Mostaganem Spoken Arabic (MTG henceforth) exploit the multifunctionality of phonetic forms, namely voice styles in their interactive process of negotiating different stances and identities and how these stances and identities are perceived by others. I have tried to analyse the voice styles of a number of women and men in positions of authority and submissiveness with a sole focus on the way that their voice styles are negotiated at their level without considering the way, that particular styles are determined by outside factors as stereotypes and attitudes. These two experiments purposefully aim to look at the way and manner authoritative and submissive identities are enacted or performed in specific contexts.
The results showed that both women and men have respectively exhibited voice styles that are seemingly masculine or feminine. The data obtained from the experiment makes it possible to say that women and men who have temporarily some interactional power in a specific situation display their authority through the use of the so-called masculine voice styles. Similarly, they use what is stereotypically more feminine voice styles to display care, and sympathy generally described as co-operative strategies or what has been termed 'rapport talk'.