Joanna Pearce
email - j.pearce.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Research title: Voice quality in contemporary Scotland: perception, gender, & identity
Research Summary
My research looks at the production and perception of voice quality in contemporary Scotland from a trans-focused perspective. For my Masters’ thesis, I investigated whether listeners use creaky voice and breathy voice as cues to a speaker’s gender.
My PhD research builds on this, combining a corpus study looking at voice quality across three regions of Scotland with an in-depth look at three transgender speakers’ use of voice quality and how they understand it.
Supervisors
Grants
Grants & Awards
- ESRC, 2018-2022, 1+3 studentship for postgraduate study
- David Murison Prize. Jointly awarded for best performance in Modern English and Scots. 2018.
- Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Prize in Literary and Linguistic Computing. Jointly awarded for Corpus Linguistics project, ‘Language change in terms used to refer to LGBT+ people in UK newspapers from 1985-2018’. 2018.
Conference
Oral presentations
- Joe Pearce. 2021. Using qualitative methods to explore experiences of gender in sociophonetics. Challenging Borders 2021, November 2021, University of Bern, Switzerland. [Invited panelist for Borders in sociophonetics panel, organised by Marie-Anne Morand and Hannah Hedegard]
- Joe Pearce. 2021. Phonation Profile Analysis: A novel VPA-based auditory-perceptual method for analysing phonation. UK Language, Variation & Change 13 (UKLVC13), September 2021, University of Glasgow, Scotland. [Online]
- Joe Pearce. 2021. Voice quality in contemporary Scotland: Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to investigate LGBTQ+ people’s understanding of their own use of voice quality. Lavender Languages & Linguistics 27 (LavLang27), Graduate Student Work-in-Progress Session, May 2021, California Institute of Integral Studies, US. [Online]
- Joe Pearce. 2021. Does 'more masculine' mean 'less feminine'? Measures of 'perceived gender' in an investigation of the role of voice quality on gender perception. Conference of the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA11), June 2021, Queen Mary University London [Online]
- Joe Pearce. 2020. Who’s talking? Phonation and gender perception in Scottish English. Presentation to Lancaster Phonetics Lab, June 2020. [Invited]
- Joe Pearce. 2020. Voice quality synthesis with the UCLA Voice Synthesizer and KlattGrid (Workshop). Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians (BAAP 2020), March 2020, York, UK (Accepted, postponed to 2022).
- Joe Pearce. 2019. Identity, socialization and environment in transgender speakers: Sociophonetic variation in creak and /s/. 05/08/2019. International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019), Melbourne, Australia.
- Joe Pearce. 2019. Identities, socialization, and environment: Exploring sociophonetic variation in creaky voice and /s/ in transgender speakers. 02/05/2019. Lavender Languages & Linguistics 26 (LavLang26), University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
- Joe Pearce. 2018. Language change in terms used to refer to LGBT+ people in UK newspapers from 1985-2018. 30/11/2018. Corpus Linguistics in Scotland Annual Meeting (CLiS), University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Poster presentations
- Joe Pearce. 2020. The influence of voice quality on gender perception in Scottish English (Poster). Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians (BAAP 2020), March 2020, University of York (Accepted, cancelled).
Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to see my slides or posters from any of the above talks! j.pearce.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Teaching
Graduate Teaching Assistant
- English Language & Linguistics Level 1A and 1B (2019/2020)
- English Language & Linguistics Level 2 (Covering for absence, October 2019)
- Phonetics: Introductory Concepts (2020/2021) [online]
- Phonetics: Advanced Concepts (2020/2021) [online]
- Sutton Trust Summer School (2020, 2021)
Lectures
- Phonetics: Advanced Concepts (2021/2022)
- Pitch, phonation and voice: Social perspectives
- Pitch, phonation and voice: Clinical perspectives
Additional Information
Other Roles
March-June 2021
- SGSAH Research Internship - EVENTIT - Effective Human Interaction & Engagement in Virtual Events
2019-2020
- Class representative for English Language & Linguistics PGR
- Secretary of the Glasgow University Linguistics Society
2018-2019
- English Language & Linguistics Department Social Media Intern
- Class representative for English Language & Linguistics PGR
- President of the Glasgow University English Language Society
Public engagement
- Language in the LGBTQ+ community: The secret language of Polari, and what it means to ‘sound gay’. Workshop at Hutcheson's Grammar School LGBTQ+ Café (2020) [Hybrid]
- How do we 'hear' gender in people's voices? Series of videos for the Scottish Researcher Showcase, Explorathon 2020.
- Language in the LGBTQ+ community: Where our words come from. Workshop at Hutcheson's Grammar School LGBTQ+ Café (2022) [Hybrid]
- Guest on Sadie Ryan's Accentricity - Bonus Episode: The Best Thing I've Learned About Language (Part 2).
- GULGBTQ+ - Our language, Our community - Workshop for Queerfest, February 2020.
- Volunteer at Seeing Speech workshop for Glasgow Science Festival, 2018.
- Volunteer at GULP's Being Human workshop with Govan Community Project, 2017.
