Indexical weight is distributed: Evidence from social evaluations of /s/

Abstract

Though it is well established that listeners can infer social meanings from linguistic variation, less is known about how listeners use properties of the linguistic signal to form such indexical relationships. We examine this question using the well-documented association between /s/ center of gravity (CoG) and perceived masculinity. Using a matched guise paradigm, we ask how two properties of the phonetic signal, the F2 of the vowel following /s/ and speaker voice, modulate listeners' masculinity evaluations of sibilant acoustics. Furthermore, we investigate whether this modulation depends on the variability of the /s/ tokens listeners hear within the experimental context by comparing listeners who heard a single invariant /s/ token per categorical /s/ CoG condition (fronted, mid, backed) with those who heard /s/ tokens that varied with the phonological environment. Bayesian modeling confirmed that high-CoG (fronted) /s/ is typically perceived as less masculine than low-CoG (backed) /s/, replicating prior findings. Critically, masculinity judgments were primarily influenced by speaker voice, with /s/ CoG and F2 of the following vowel serving as secondary, modulating cues to speaker masculinity. These findings suggest that social evaluation reflects integration of the full available signal rather than extraction of a single variable.