Variation interculturelle de la perception du spectre masculin-féminin : indexation de la voix genrée en France et aux Etats-Unis

Résumé En

Expanding a gender paradigm beyond binary categories requires new perceptual tools, which may be implicit or explicit. In this paper we test the use of a masculinity-femininity scale with an "overlap" zone in the middle that is not explicitly delimited and ask for listeners' gender assessments based on short speech samples produced by cis women, cis men and nonbinary people from the USA. As gender is a sociocultural artefact and the social "footprint" of gender non-conforming or nonbinary individuals is greater in North America than in France (for example), how listeners use the scale potentially indicates 1) something about how they view gender and 2) something about the cues they use to index gender. Statistical analyses suggest that French and American listeners share the same indexations for the vocal cues in their masculinity-femininity assessments, but there is evidence that there are some interesting differences, particularly concerning the strategic use of the entire scale versus the endpoints.