Individual variation in performing reading-aloud speech among deaf speakers

Abstract The study examines the stylistic variation (interview vs. passage-reading) of socially meaningful variables among orally educated deaf speakers of Mandarin in Taipei, Taiwan. I examine the use of the retroflex and alveolar fricatives across two groups: deaf persons who received speech therapy or training, and those who did not receive speech medicalization. The two groups acquire the metalinguistic awareness of sibilant variation in different ways. Results show that the former group utilize the variables in the same way as hearing persons do – increasing the degree of retroflexion in reading-aloud speech. The latter group engage with the variable in an opposite way – decreasing the degree of retroflexion, which nevertheless also indexes able-bodiedness, possibly via the embodied link between a stronger hiss and a fronted sibilant. I argue that we need to carefully look at what different linguistic variants index through locating the variants in each speaker’s personal history.