Research

I am constantly asking which questions, connections, and people are missing and yet integral to interdisciplinary work related to language and gender. United by these commitments, my research critically questions how those othered by race and gender respond to categories using semiotic resources such as sounds and words, and the limits and affordances of these positionalities.

My current research projects consider how trans studies can better inform sociolinguistics and vice versa; the relationship between gender, race, and language for Black nonbinary speakers; and the role of perception for marginalized language users.

I engage with seemingly disparate theories and methods emerging from sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, psycholinguistics, and phonetics, to trans and gender studies, critical race theory, and more to contextualize my research on nonbinary language.

Current projects

Putting the 'trans' in translanguaging + linguistics

Trans epistemology has a lot to offer fields of language work, and yet few have explored in depth the ways in which transness is generative of the stakes in modern sociolinguistics and other critical language studies. In this stream of research, I integrate trans studies and sociolinguistics to push forward both fields of study.

What is the role of boundaries, normativities, and lived experience in the study of language? What can transness - when taken seriously and grounded in trans epistemologies - tell us about these aspects of language in use?

Research group:

Trans/Queer: Terrains of Queerness (TQ2) is an interdisciplinary research and reading group exploring questions around boundaries within fields such as applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and trans and gender studies. Convened by Dr. Steele, we are a collectively run group dedicated to advancing necessary conversations within our interdisciplines.

Presentations:

Steele, Ariana, Yi-Fan Li and Julian Canjura. 2025. Putting the 'trans' in translingualism: A conversation. Presented to Weiss Humanities Symposium, Pennsylvania State University.

Steele, Ariana. 2025. What and why a trans (applied) linguistics: Trans epistemologies in language research. Presented to the Department of Applied Linguistics, Pennsylvania State University.

Steele, Ariana. 2024. Sociolinguistics and indexicality as tools for trans resistance. Presented at the 2nd International Trans Studies Conference, Chicago, Illinois.

Racialized gender and nonbinary speech

How do power and oppression shift indexical meaning for multiply marginalized individuals?

In this stream, I incorporate analyses of oppression and resistance as I consider how Black nonbinary speakers use language to construct nonbinary gender identities. This work fuses sociophonetics with critical inquiry into anti-Blackness and transphobia, along with power and resistance.

Interested in working with the data I've used for these projects? Check out my upcoming Nonbinary & Black Corpus!

Publications:

Steele, Ariana. 2022. Enacting new worlds of gender: Nonbinary speakers, racialized gender, and anti-colonialism. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, ed. Kira Hall and Rusty Barrett. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Steele, Ariana. Indexicality, power, and hegemony: The case for indexical resistance. Forthcoming for Battlefield linguistics: Contemporary contestations of language gender and sexuality, eds. Scott Burnett and Francesca Vigo. De Gruyter.

Dissertation:

Steele, Ariana. 2024. The sociolinguistic construction of gender non-conformity under hegemony: Nonbinarity, Blackness, and the possibilities of resistance [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center.

Presentations:

Steele, Ariana. 2025. Gender non-conformity amongst concerns about safety: Nonbinary stylization, embodiment, and the confines of anti-Blackness. Presented at the International Gender and Language Association Biannual Conference, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Steele, Ariana. 2023. Liberation under hegemony: Nonbinary ideologies of gender subversion and the racialization of it all. In Steele, A. & Raclaw, J. (Chairs), Trans Linguistic Logics: Spatial and Embodied Epistemologies Across Modalities. Panel conducted at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada.

Steele, Ariana. 2022. Intersectionality of social meaning: Race, gender, and /s/ perception. Presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation, San Jose, CA, USA.

Steele, Ariana. 2022. Can we mitigate stereotypes through speech? Sociophonetic perception of /s/ amongst Black and white nonbinary talkers. Presented at Lavender Languages & Linguistics Conference, Catania, Italy.

Steele, Ariana. 2019. Genderless, genderfuck, and everything in between: Racialized style and queer visibility among non-binary speakers in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Presented at Lavender Languages & Linguistics Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Steele, Ariana. 2018. Stylistic practice and linguistic differentiation for non-binary speakers in Columbus, Ohio. Presented at the International Gender and Language Association Biannual Conference, Gaborone, Botswana.

Gender beyond the binary in sociolinguistic variation

From the standpoint of the gender non-normative speaker, J Calder and I advocate for an approach in sociolinguistics that centers community-based gender epistemologies in interpreting social meaning and considers how the perspective of the listener influences the perception of the speech of marginalized talkers.

Publication:

Calder, J and Ariana Steele. Interrogating the cisgender listening subject in the study of trans voices. Gender & Language 18(3).

Presentation:

Calder, J and Ariana Steele. 2019. Gender in sociolinguistic variation beyond the binary. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting. New York, NY.

Rhythm in Haitian Creole

Nandi Sims and I are measuring prosodic rhythm in Haitian Creole to develop a documentation of rhythm in the language.

Manuscript:

Nandi Sims and Ariana Steele. Prosodic rhythm in Haitian Creole. In preparation.

Past projects

Reverse linguistic stereotyping of AAL

When we speak to a person, our perceptions of their speech are modulated by social things about them such as their race.

Using a matched guise study as the basis for my undergraduate thesis, I investigated how listeners' experience with and stereotypes about Black talkers influenced their perception of the diphthong /ai/.

Presentation:

2016. The sociophonetics of Blackness. Presented at the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Research Forum, Evanston, IL.

Thesis:

Steele, Ariana. 2016. Reverse linguistic stereotyping of a race-based dialect [Unpublished undergraduate thesis]. Northwestern University.

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