Lal Zimman

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

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).

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.

Upcoming events: October 10-12, 2019: I will be at NWAV at the University of Oregon with two contributions: "Normativity in normalization: Methodological challenges in the analysis of vowels among non-binary speakers, " a co-authored talk with deandre miles-hercules. "A roadmap for inclusion in sociocultural linguistics, " a workshop co-presented with my colleagues Anne Charity-Hudley, Tracy Conner, Kendra Calhoun, Jamaal Muwwakkil, deandre miles-hercules, Maya Keshav & Joyhanna Yoo Garza. 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: 9/13/19: I was interviewed and quoted by Arwa Mahdawi for her piece in The Guardian, "He, she, they … should we now clarify our preferred pronouns when we say hello? " 7/15/19: You can hear me on this week's episode of The Vocal Fries (a linguistics podcast!), in an episode titled "Lal-apalooza" (old news...)

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'.