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Abstract
<p class="first" id="d1723582e53">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.
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