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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, words, and the body, and the limits and affordances of these discursive practices.
My current research projects consider the relationship between gender, race, and language for Black nonbinary speakers; how trans studies can better inform sociolinguistics and vice versa; 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 critical theory, trans and gender studies, philosophy, and more to interpret trans and nonbinary language.
Β Current projects (click to expand)
Black nonbinary speech + identity ππ½
How do power and oppression shift indexical meaning for multiply marginalized individuals?Β
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. 2025. Indexicality, power, and hegemony: The case for indexical resistance. In Battlefield Linguistics: Queer, Trans, and Feminist Interventions in Linguistic and Discursive Change, eds. Scott Burnett and Francesca Vigo. De Gruyter (p. 47-66) [Link to access]
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. [Link to access]
Theses:
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. [Link to access]
Steele, Ariana. 2019. Non-binary speech, race, and non-normative gender: Sociolinguistic style beyond the binary [Masters thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. [Link to access]
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.
Putting the 'trans' in translanguaging + linguistics π§ββοΈ
Trans epistemology has a lot to offer (applied) linguistics, 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.Β
With the reading and research group I direct, Trans & Queer Terrains Lab, we discuss questions like: 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?
Presentations:
Steele, Ariana. 2026. On self-identification in language and identity research: Bringing Black trans feminism to the fore. Presented at the Linguistics Society of American annual meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.
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.
Perception and perceiving subjects of trans speech π
From the standpoint of the gender non-normative speaker, 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. Much of the early thinking on this work started with my collaborator J Calder.
Publications:
Steele, Ariana. 2025. Perception is political: The production-perception interface as a contested site of power and legibility. Journal of Sociolinguistics 29(5), 367-370. [Link to access]
Calder, J and Ariana Steele. 2025. Interrogating the cisgender listening subject in the study of trans voices. Gender & Language 18(3). [Link to access]
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 π₯
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.
Β Past projects
Reverse linguistic stereotyping of African American English π£οΈ
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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