Lal Zimman

Lal Zimman (FAQ) [lɑɫ ˈzimn̩] Assistant Professor Department of Linguistics 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' 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 deal broadly with the relationship between language, gender, and embodiment in transgender and queer communities. I approach this research from two directions, each of which is focused on the linguistic practices of transgender speakers. The first concerns the discursive construction of biological sex, which highlights the culturally contingent process of assigning a sex to particular kinds of bodies. The second arm of my work uses this 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. Check out my research page for more about my current projects. Download my CV as a PDF (last updated July, 2017).

News: After a bit of a hiatus, I've been blogging on Trans Talk. You can follow me on Medium or follow the page on Facebook to be notified about new posts. I wrote a post for Gender & Society's blog, "Two legal sexes aren't enough: Why governments should recognize non-binary bodies and identities." I was quoted in an article by Mark Peters at the Boston Globe, Womyn, wimmin, and other folx, on the power of x as a replacement for other orthographic symbols. I recently began blogging on Medium, where much of my writing concerns trans issues and their connections to language. With co-author Kira Hall, I completed an extensive annotated bibliography of research on language gender and sexuality featured in Oxford's Bibliographies Online. My blog post for the OUP was selected for inclusion in The OUPblog Tenth Anniversary Book: Ten Years of Academic Insights for the Thinking World, which is available as an eBook in various formats, including PDF [7/16/15]. I wrote a blog post for Oxford University Press on Facebook's adoption of a less normative approach to gender identity and pronouns, and what that move reflects about the future of gendered pronoun practices. Check out Christen McCurdy's piece for the Pacific Standard, "Are Gender-Neutral Pronouns Actually Doomed?" Science Daily picked up on my paper at the 2012 Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America on the significance of gender markers other than pitch on the categorization of gender based on read speech. (NB: The Atlantic also mentioned the study, though the context and conclusions are out of step with what the study actually shows.) Upcoming events: Check back later for more!

Frequently Asked Questions about my name: How do you pronounce Lal? Phonemically, my pronunciation of Lal is just like it's spelled: /lal/, though other [+back] [+low] 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 Paul or fall. 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 the latter meaning is not what 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, and a few others. What about your last name? Much less interesting, but sometimes exotified in pronunciation (presumably because of my first name). It's like Zimmerman without the 'er'.