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Lal Zimman (he/him/his) (FAQ)
[lɑɫ
ˈzimn̩]
zimman at ucsb dot edu
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Affiliated Faculty in Feminist Studies
South Hall 3518
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Hello! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department
of Linguistics and Affiliated Faculty in the Department
of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara. I'm also
General Editor of Oxford University Press's Studies
in Language, Gender, and Sexuality Series. I received
my PhD in Linguistics at the University
of Colorado, Boulder in 2012, where I was affiliated
with the programs in Culture,
Language
and Social Practice (CLASP) and Women's
and Gender Studies. Since then, I have also worked in
the Linguistics Departments at Reed
College and Stanford
University.
My research pursuits are situated in the interdisciplinary
field of sociocultural
linguistics and are focused around two areas: 1)
language, gender, and sexuality, and 2) sociophonetics and
(increasingly) its interface with discourse. I also have a
community-driven research agenda that focuses on the
relationship between language, identity, and embodiment in
transgender (and queer) communities. I approach this
research from several directions. One concerns the
discursive construction of biological sex, which highlights
the culturally contingent process of assigning a sex to
particular kinds of bodies. Another arm of my work uses this
socially-grounded perspective on embodiment to explore the
gendered characteristics of the voice, which are often
assumed to arise from speakers' position in a
biologically-determined sex binary. My research on trans
voices aims to explore the complex and mutually reinforcing
relationship between social subjectivity in ways that
account for a fuller range of gendered identities while also
illuminating our understanding of more normative gender.
Most recently, I have been working on challenges that arise
in the study of gender and the voice, particularly with
respect to the role of discourse stance in driving the use
of vocal pitch and voice quality.
Check out my research page for
more about my current projects.
If you are a prospective student who is interested in
working with me, please see this
page.
Download my CV as a PDF (last
updated September, 2019).
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Some of my most recent publications:
- Zimman, Lal & Will Hayworth (to appear, 2019). Lexical
change as sociopolitical change in trans and cis
identity labels: New methods for the corpus analysis
of internet data. University of Pennsylvania
Working Papers in Linguistics 25(2).
- Zimman, Lal (2018). Transgender
voices: Insights on identity, embodiment, and the
gender of the voice. Language and Linguistics
Compass. Early view e12284.
- Zimman, Lal (2019). Trans
identification, agency, and embodiment in discourse:
The linguistic construction of gender and sex. International
Journal of the Sociology of Language
256(1):147-175.
- Zimman, Lal (2018). Transgender
voices: Insights on identity, embodiment, and the
gender of the voice. Language and Linguistics
Compass 12(7):e12284.
- Zimman, Lal (2018). Working
with transgender communities. For Christine
Mallinson, Becky Childs, and Gerard Van Herk (Eds.), Data
Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and
Applications, 2nd edition, pp. 49-52. New York:
Routledge.
- Zimman, Lal (2017). Transgender
language reform: Some challenges and strategies for
promoting trans-affirming, gender-inclusive language.
Journal of Language and Discrimination
1(1):84-105.
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Upcoming events:
- October 10-12, 2019: I will be at
NWAV at the University of Oregon with two contributions:
- November 7, 2019: I will be giving a
talk for UC Berkeley's Language Variation and Change
Group.
- January, 2020: Tyler
Kibbey and I organized an LSA panel emerging from
the 2019 Summer Institute.
- The panel is entitled "Queer and Trans Digital
Modalities."
- My talk on the panel, with collaborator Will
Hayworth (they/them), is "How we got here:
Short-scale change in identity labels for trans, cis,
and non-binary people in the 2000s."
- June, 2020: I will be a keynote
speaker at IGALA
11 in London.
Other recent news & press clippings:
(old news...)
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Frequently Asked Questions
about my name:
How do you pronounce Lal?
Phonemically, my pronunciation of Lal is more or less as
it's spelled: /lɑl/ though other backish/lowish vowels are
also fine to my ear. No front vowels, please. In less
technical terms, it shouldn't rhyme with Hal or pal - it
should sound more like hall or Paul.
Is that short for anything?
Nope, that's it.
So what kind of name is Lal?
It comes from Sanskrit and can be glossed as 'to play / to
caress'. It also means 'red' in Hindi, though Sanskrit is
the language my parents – hippies, if there was any
doubt – had in mind when naming me. Other, perhaps
better known, Lals include the second Prime Minister to
India (Lal
Bahadur), Data's android daughter in a
memorable episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation
(she got to pick her own gender!), and a
few others.
What about your last name?
Much less interesting, but sometimes exotified in
pronunciation. It's just like Zimmerman without the 'er'.
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