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“There’s a lot of baggage”: Trans North Carolinians’ Orientations to Southern Identity in Discourse

Haley M. Kinsler | M.A. Student of English in Linguistics

North Carolina State University

SECOL/LAVIS 24

Hey, y’all, thank you for coming to my presentation, I’m Haley, I use he/they/she pronouns, and I am a second year master's student in linguistics at NC State University in Raleigh, NC. I would like to start off by acknowledging that my work is conducted on the traditional homelands and gathering places of the Coharie, Eastern Band of Cherokee, Haliwa-Saponi, Lumbee, Meherrin, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Sappony and Waccamaw Siouan. Furthermore, I live and work in a city in which local infrastructure and resources were obtained through the forced labor of enslaved Black people who were forcibly brought here against their will. It is important for me to hold these histories and consider the ways in which they shape these spaces I inhabit, particularly as this analysis discusses the sociopolitical complexities of the South. I also like to speak to my positionality as well, as I feel it is essential in shaping my orientation to my work, so I am a white, trans, queer person who bounced around the east coast a bit while growing up, but I have lived in North Carolina for most of my life, with much of that time spent in Southern Wake County.��Coharie (co-HAIR-ee)

Eastern Band of Cherokee (cheh-ruh-kee)

Haliwa-Saponi (HA-lih-WAH suh-PONY)

Lumbee (LUM-bee)

Meherrin (ma-HAIR-in)

Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation (OAK-uh-NEE-chee suh-PONY)

Sappony (suh-PONY)

Waccamaw Siouan (WOK-uh-ma Soo-uhn)

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Introduction

Research Question: What kinds of stances do trans and nonbinary people in North Carolina take toward Southern identity? Do they often view themselves as Southerners? Do they invoke dominant narratives about the South in their discussion? How does that come into conversation with transness, queerness, and LGBTQIA+ issues in the South?
This worked is rooted in the discipline of trans linguistics, utilizing it as a means for exploring how trans and nonbinary people use their linguistic expertise to respond to outsiders’ views of the South
This requires giving them the agency to share their views on Southern identity, both in terms of dominant narratives about what it means to be a Southerner, as well their personal orientations to Southern identity

So this study was rooted in a burning question I had about Southern identity. As someone who transitioned in the South, I was interested in exploring the complex relationship between trans and Southern identity, especially because it appeared to me that many people assume that trans people and communities do not exist in the South, despite this being in conflict with my lived experience.

Some of you may have heard Lal Zimman say “trans people are natural linguists” (2018), and this motivated my wanting to document the rich linguistic expertise and practices I saw in my community. So my research question asked - what kinds of stances do trans and nonbinary people take toward Southern identity? And how are narratives that position transness and Southernness as mutually exclusive invoked by participants and responded to?

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Rise in anti-trans legislation

3 bills passed in 2023
Legislative session begins in late April with 7 anti-trans bills currently sitting in the legislature

Community and organizing

There are several statewide and local organizations focused on LGBTQIA+ advocacy in the state
Pride events are growing in some areas

Trans Life in North Carolina

Press conference outside of North Carolina General Assembly to speak out against SB 49

Photo Credit: Rose Hoban | NC Health News | June 28th, 2023

But to contextualize the types of answers I got from participants, we have to understand what life looks like for them in North Carolina. For one, it has a long history of anti-trans legislation, including HB 2, the infamous “bathroom bill” that barred access to public restrooms in 2016 and repealed shortly thereafter. Since its passage, anti-trans sentiment in North Carolina has only risen, with several bills passed as recently as 2023.

Transphobia, however, is not new, and organizers, creatives, and activists in the South have been engaging in advocacy work for the rights of transgender and nonbinary communities there, creating spaces dedicated to serving these communities, so there is a lot to hold when we consider what it looks like to be trans in a Southern state, both in terms of facing rising anti-trans sentiment and honoring the work that we do in building spaces for our communities and for our joy.

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Kiesling (2011)

“Stance creates relationships of speaker[s] to some discursive figure” (2)

Jones (2022) on stancetaking in the discourse of trans youth in the United Kingdom

Agha (2005) Enregisterment

The enregistered voice as “the class of social voices linked to registers… a register’s forms are social indexicals in that they index stereotypic social personae” (39)

Southern & Queer Identity

“Our projects will be stronger if we consider our subjects’ relationships to popular definitions of the South and inquire about their definitions of southern, rather than presuming or requiring regional identification” (Smith 1997: 382)

Literature Review

So I focused on stance, and I draw on Kiesling’s work, particularly considering stance as a means for evaluating a figure in discourse in such a way that speakers can align toward or away from that figure. In this case, I view Southern identity as the figure being evaluated. I also draw on Agha’s work to look at participants’ invoking of Southern personas, especially in cases where they reference linguistic or semiotic features that have been linked to a Southern persona through this process of enregisterment. I also found Jones’ work helpful in seeing how she applies a similar theoretical framework to look at stance in the discourse of trans youth in the UK.

Overall, though, I found myself really motivated by this point from Smith, who highlighted the importance of inquiring about our participants’ definitions of Southern, rather than presuming or requiring regional identification (1997). In this vein, I am interested in recentering the knowledge and experiences of trans and nonbinary people, drawing on their agency and ability to articulate their relationships with Southern identity.

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Sociolinguistic interviews with 18 participants conducted between August and October of 2023

Participants span a range of counties including Alamance, Durham, Forsyth, Johnston, Orange, and Wake

North Carolina Trans & Nonbinary Language Project

These were interviews conducted by myself and Dr. Archie Crowley as part of the North Carolina Trans & Nonbinary Language Project. This project documents the experiences of trans and nonbinary people with language, and we have collected 18 interviews so far. These interviews last around 60-90 minutes and cover a range of topics, but this particular analysis focuses on participants’ answer to the question “Do you identify as a Southerner?”��All of our participants have some type of relationship to North Carolina, whether they currently live or work in the state, or whether they were born and raised there, but they span a range of counties, primarily in the Piedmont region. The cities that participants lived in at the time of their interview are listed on this map, though we hope of course to add many more around the state, so if you have connections, let me or Dr. Crowley know!

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This analysis looks at 13 participant interviews from the corpus from participants who grew up in the South
Verbal data analysis

Conducted using methodology outlined in Geisler and Swarts’ (2019) book Coding Streams of Language
Statistical analysis of qualitative codes through models in R

Mixed Effects Logistic Regression: STANCE + IDENTITY + PRONOUN + participant contrast groups + random effect for speaker
Multinomial Logistic Regression: STANCE + IDENTITY + presence of 1st person singular pronouns + participant contrast group

Discourse analysis of representative excerpts from participants

Methods

This is basically the “methods at a glance” slide, where you can see the overall progression of my approach to this analysis. I started out by reducing the number of interviews to 13, as for the initial analysis I wanted to focus on interviews from participants who had spent either all or part of their upbringing in the South.

Then, I use a methodology from Geisler and Swarts’ to develop a coding scheme that defined different types of stance and identity in participant interviews. In order to identify relationships between the coding dimensions, the codes within each respective dimension, and the participants’ proximity to Southern identity, I ran two regression models, including a mixed-effects logistic regression, which notably has a random effect for speaker, and a multinomial logistic regression.

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Table 1: Participant Demographics

Name	Race	Ethnicity	Age
Daisy	White	White, sometimes will say Scots-Irish	26
digit	white	white/i dont really get asked	20
Hannah	White	White	36
Jaden	Caucasian	Hispanic	25
Jeremy	White	Non-Hispanic	36
Kay	Black	African-American	23
M	White	Non-Hispanic	35
Oliver	White, not hispanic	American	25
RB	White	Ashkenazi Jew and Western European	35
Seth H.	White	Southern American	45
Starlight	White	N/A	22
Stone	afro-caribbean	american	21
Sylvia	Black and White (mixed Race)	American	26

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Table 2: Coding Scheme

Stance Dimension
Affective	Code for Affective any segment in which the participant is offering a stance based on an emotion
Epistemic	Code for Epistemic any segment in which the participant is offering a stance based on their knowledge and beliefs or expressing commitment to a point of view
Evaluative	Code for Evaluative any time that the participant is offering an assessment of something
Evaluation Dimension
Affirmative	Code for Affirmative any segment in which the participant is offering a positive assessment of something as part of an evaluative stance move
Unfavorable	Code for Unfavorable any segment in which t the participant is offering a positive assessment of something as part of an evaluative stance move
Identity Dimension
Alignment	Code for Alignment any segment in which the participant states that they identify as a Southerner or references a particular context in which they would identify as a Southerner or a reason they cite to validate why they identify as a Southerner
Disalignment	Code for Disalignment any segment in which the participant states that they do not identify as a Southerner or references a particular context in which they would not identify as a Southerner or a reason they cite to validate why they do not identify as a Southerner
Persona	Code for Persona any segment in which the participant references a larger Southern register or persona
Pronoun Dimension
Code the first objective or subjective pronoun that occurs in a clause

Next, I developed my coding scheme, and these coding definitions were based on the literature I looked at on stance.

For today, we’ll focus on the stance and identity coding dimensions. My stance dimension coded for three kinds of stance:�(1) Affective stance, in which participants offer a stance based on an emotion

for example, saying things like “I am proud to be a Southerner” or “I would be disappointed to be called a Southerner” ��(2) Evaluative stance, in which they offer some sort of an assessment

including saying things like “the South is bad” or “it’s important to be a Southerner”

(3) And epistemic stance, in which they offer a stance where they indicate the degree to which they believe something.

This includes comments like “I might be a Southerner” or “I probably am not a Southerner”

Similarly, there were three codes in the identity dimension, the first two of include alignment and disalignment, respectively highlighting instances in which a participant references a context in which they would or would not identify as a Southerner. Finally, the persona code looks at instances in which the participant makes a reference to some feature linked to enregistered Southern identities, including comments about Southern linguistic features, or behaviors and practices attributed to Southerners.

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Southern Participants

These are participants who indicated a strong proximity to Southern identity and stated that they fully identify themselves as Southerners

Contextually Southern Participants

These are participants who stated that they only identified as Southern in particular contexts or used it as a descriptive label rather than an identity marker

Non-Southern Participants

These are participants who indicated a distance from Southern identity and did not identify themselves as Southerners

Participant Contrast Groups

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Table 3: Code Counts Across Participants

Interview Information		Stance			Identity
Participant	Clauses	Affective	Epistemic	Evaluative	Alignment	Disalignment	Persona
Southern
Daisy	114	2	2	35	6	9	14
digit	24	0	0	0	5	1	2
Kay	26	8	1	2	5	4	0
RB	17	0	1	0	8	0	1
Seth H.	87	4	3	6	5	2	21
Contextually Southern
Hannah	33	0	9	0	6	3	8
Jaden	47	2	3	5	9	7	13
M	55	4	5	3	8	2	2
Oliver	63	0	7	3	5	0	3
Sylvia	101	6	4	5	4	5	22
Non-Southern
Jeremy	38	0	3	10	3	12	2
Starlight	17	0	3	0	0	2	1
Stone	21	1	2	3	1	4	6
Total	643	27	43	72	65	51	95

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Coefficient Table for Mixed Effects Logistic Regression

Factor Group	Factor Type	Est	SE	Z Score	p Value
Intercept		-1.91	0.04	-6.41	1.45e-10 ***
Identity	Alignment	1.30	1.20	4.04	5.40e-05 ***
	Disalignment	2.04	2.72	5.76	8.17e-09 ***
	Persona	1.29	1.03	4.54	5.52e-06 ***
Random Effects		N	σ2	τ00	ICC
Participant		13	3.29	0.17	0.05

Table 4: Coefficient Table for Mixed Effects Logistic Regression

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

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Figure 1: Fitted Values for Mixed-Effects Logistic Regression

You can see these effects from the model visualized here, with the fitted values on the Y-Axis, and each of the identity codes on the X-Axis. You can see based on the height of the boxplot whether one identity code was more likely to be applied alongside a stance code relative to identity not being applied at all, and this effect was the strongest for the DISALIGNMENT code, indicating that participants were most likely to make some type of STANCE move in cases where they offered a reason for not identifying as a Southerner. The relationship between STANCE and ALIGNMENT was similar, though to a lesser degree.

So I was thinking, okay, these identity codes are all linked to the stance dimension, so there’s got to be particular interactions between particular stance and identity codes, right? For example, I wondered if disalignment was most likely to happen with an affective or epistemic stance move. This is what led me to run a multinomial regression model.

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Coefficient Table for Mixed Effects Logistic Regression

Response	Predictor Group	Predictor	Odds Ratios	SE	Z Score	p Value
Affective	Intercept		-1.91	0.04	-6.41	< 0.001
	Contrast	Not Southern	0.07	0.08	-2.34	< 0.05
		Southern	0.44	0.24	-1.49	0.138
Epistemic	Intercept		1.29	1.03	4.54	< 0.001
	Contrast	Not Southern	0.32	0.20	-1.84	0.067
		Southern	0.11	0.06	-4.04	< 0.001

Table 5: Coefficient Table for Multinomial Logistic Regression

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

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Figure 2: Fitted Values for Multinomial Logistic Regression

And this is visualized in a similar way to the previous model, but now it is faceted based on whether participants identified as a Southerner or not, allowing you to see how the types of stance codes used differ between these groups.

The model showed that the strongest effect indicated that SOUTHERN participants were less likely to use an EPISTEMIC code than an EVALUATIVE code, relative to CONTEXTUALLY SOUTHERN participants (OR = 0.11, p < 0.0001). The same effect was true for NON-SOUTHERN participants, but to a lesser degree (OR = 0.32, p = 0.067). Similarly, there were strong relationships between the participant contrast groups and the AFFECTIVE code. Here, the most significant finding indicated that NON-SOUTHERNERS were less likely to use AFFECTIVE codes than EVALUATIVE codes, relative to CONTEXTUAL SOUTHERNERS (OR = 0.07, p < 0.05). Again, the same effect was true for SOUTHERNERS, to a lesser degree (OR = 0.44, p = 0.138).

The important thing to really remember here is that these models gave me a sense of whether or not the distribution of codes in the data was by chance or insignificant. It was from the significant findings of these two models that I shaped my approach for my discourse analysis of excerpts from participants.

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Southern Participants

Daisy (he/they)

white, agender/genderqueer, 26

1	like even just a few years ago
2	I hated anything that like made me seem like a Southerner
3	all through like middle school and high school
4	it was like
5	I hate when people say y’all
6	y’all is stupid
7	no one says that

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Southern Participants

Daisy (he/they)

white, agender/genderqueer, 26

1	like even just a few years ago
2	I hated anything that like made me seem like a Southerner
3	all through like middle school and high school
4	it was like
5	I hate when people say y’all
6	y’all is stupid
7	no one says that

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Southern Participants

Daisy (he/they)

white, agender/genderqueer, 26

1	like even just a few years ago
2	I hated anything that like made me seem like a Southerner
3	all through like middle school and high school
4	it was like
5	I hate when people say y’all
6	y’all is stupid
7	no one says that

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Southern Participants

Daisy (he/they)

white, agender/genderqueer, 26

8	but like it actually is really important to me now as a Southerner
9	as a person that grew up in a rural area
10	as a person that grew up in poverty
11	like when I was a kid
12	my stepfather like took us all hunting
13	and like I was always in the woods etc.
14	and like that’s really important to the way I feel about everything now
15	like being queer in any way

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Southern Participants

Kay (they/them)

Black, non-binary, 23

1	I feel like in the last couple of years is when I’ve actually started feeling more confident in saying that
2	because it’s- it’s felt good to know like my origin
3	the origin in terms of like land I was born on
4	but knowing that the experiences I had on that land don’t have to define my connection with that land as well
5	because I think for a long time I hated being from here
	because just politically I mean it’s awful

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Southern Participants

Kay (they/them)

Black, non-binary, 23

1	I feel like in the last couple of years is when I’ve actually started feeling more confident in saying that
2	because it’s- it’s felt good to know like my origin
3	the origin in terms of like land I was born on
4	but knowing that the experiences I had on that land don’t have to define my connection with that land as well
5	because I think for a long time I hated being from here
	because just politically I mean it’s awful

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Southern Participants

Kay (they/them)

Black, non-binary, 23

1	I feel like in the last couple of years is when I’ve actually started feeling more confident in saying that
2	because it’s- it’s felt good to know like my origin
3	the origin in terms of like land I was born on
4	but knowing that the experiences I had on that land don’t have to define my connection with that land as well
5	because I think for a long time I hated being from here
	because just politically I mean it’s awful

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Southern Participants

Kay (they/them)

Black, non-binary, 23

1	I feel like in the last couple of years is when I’ve actually started feeling more confident in saying that
2	because it’s- it’s felt good to know like my origin
3	the origin in terms of like land I was born on
4	but knowing that the experiences I had on that land don’t have to define my connection with that land as well
5	because I think for a long time I hated being from here
	because just politically I mean it’s awful

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Contextually Southern Participants

Jaden (they/them/theirs)

white, nonbinary, trans-feminine, 25

1	it- it has a lot of connotations
2	and I’ve experienced this also with my accent
3	I don’t have nearly as pronounced an accent as a lot of people I know
4	but I do have some people pick up on it and like ask me where I’m from
5	and definitely if I am speaking with a more pronounced Southern accent
6	which I do have access to
7	it seems to shape people’s opinions of me in a way that I don’t like
8	with being kind of backwards
9	with being maybe a bit less intelligent
10	those sorts of things

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Contextually Southern Participants

Jaden (they/them/theirs)

white, nonbinary, trans-feminine, 25

1	it- it has a lot of connotations
2	and I’ve experienced this also with my accent
3	I don’t have nearly as pronounced an accent as a lot of people I know
4	but I do have some people pick up on it and like ask me where I’m from
5	and definitely if I am speaking with a more pronounced Southern accent
6	which I do have access to
7	it seems to shape people’s opinions of me in a way that I don’t like
8	with being kind of backwards
9	with being maybe a bit less intelligent
10	those sorts of things

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Contextually Southern Participants

Jaden (they/them/theirs)

white, nonbinary, trans-feminine, 25

1	it- it has a lot of connotations
2	and I’ve experienced this also with my accent
3	I don’t have nearly as pronounced an accent as a lot of people I know
4	but I do have some people pick up on it and like ask me where I’m from
5	and definitely if I am speaking with a more pronounced Southern accent
6	which I do have access to
7	it seems to shape people’s opinions of me in a way that I don’t like
8	with being kind of backwards
9	with being maybe a bit less intelligent
10	those sorts of things

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Contextually Southern Participants

M (they/them)

white, non-binary, 25

1	So like I don't think I would identify as a Southerner
2	until somebody not from here was being shitty about the South
3	and then I would very much be like
4	“no shut up”
5	like if that makes sense
6	yeah that’s interesting
7	I hadn’t thought about that too much
8	because like it feels
9	it feels like there’s a lot of baggage with being a Southerner
10	but like I’m absolutely like from here
11	and like a lot of what makes me me probably came from that

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Contextually Southern Participants

M (they/them)

white, non-binary, 25

1	So like I don't think I would identify as a Southerner
2	until somebody not from here was being shitty about the South
3	and then I would very much be like
4	“no shut up”
5	like if that makes sense
6	yeah that’s interesting
7	I hadn’t thought about that too much
8	because like it feels
9	it feels like there’s a lot of baggage with being a Southerner
10	but like I’m absolutely like from here
11	and like a lot of what makes me me probably came from that

In this excerpt, M offers various contexts in which they would shift from disalignment to alignment with Southern identity. They open by stating “I don’t think I would identify as a Southerner” (line 1), signaling their distance from this identity label. Notice that epistemic stance move when they state “I don’t think”, illustrating the tentative nature of this disalignment and the possibility that it may be subject to change. They then shift toward alignment with Southern identity as they clarify that they would only invoke Southern identity in the context of responding to outsider narratives about the South. Their use of “until” (line 2) signals that this alignment with Southern identity, however, still shows that this alignment is temporally bound and therefore contextually dependent. Then, M voices the type of response they would give to these outside narratives, stating that they would respond to instances where “somebody not from here” was negatively evaluating the region by responding with “no shut up” (line 4).

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Contextually Southern Participants

M (they/them)

white, non-binary, 25

1	So like I don't think I would identify as a Southerner
2	until somebody not from here was being shitty about the South
3	and then I would very much be like
4	“no shut up”
5	like if that makes sense
6	yeah that’s interesting
7	I hadn’t thought about that too much
8	because like it feels
9	it feels like there’s a lot of baggage with being a Southerner
10	but like I’m absolutely like from here
11	and like a lot of what makes me me probably came from that

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Non-Southern Participants

Starlight (he/they)

white, genderqueer, transmasc, 22

1	I would not personally identify as a Southerner
2	my family moved here from California
3	and so like I- we moved here when I was three
4	I don’t remember anything else
5	you know
6	I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life
7	but like my parents and my family, the people who are around me during my childhood, are not Southerners
8	and so like well I have grown up and lived here my whole life
9	I don’t really - I don’t necessarily identify as a Southerner

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Non-Southern Participants

Starlight (he/they)

white, genderqueer, transmasc, 22

1	I would not personally identify as a Southerner
2	my family moved here from California
3	and so like I- we moved here when I was three
4	I don’t remember anything else
5	you know
6	I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life
7	but like my parents and my family, the people who are around me during my childhood, are not Southerners
8	and so like well I have grown up and lived here my whole life
9	I don’t really - I don’t necessarily identify as a Southerner

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Non-Southern Participants

Starlight (he/they)

white, genderqueer, transmasc, 22

1	I would not personally identify as a Southerner
2	my family moved here from California
3	and so like I- we moved here when I was three
4	I don’t remember anything else
5	you know
6	I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life
7	but like my parents and my family, the people who are around me during my childhood, are not Southerners
8	and so like well I have grown up and lived here my whole life
9	I don’t really - I don’t necessarily identify as a Southerner

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Non-Southern Participants

Starlight (he/they)

white, genderqueer, transmasc, 22

1	I would not personally identify as a Southerner
2	my family moved here from California
3	and so like I- we moved here when I was three
4	I don’t remember anything else
5	you know
6	I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life
7	but like my parents and my family, the people who are around me during my childhood, are not Southerners
8	and so like well I have grown up and lived here my whole life
9	I don’t really - I don’t necessarily identify as a Southerner

Still, he defers to his family’s relationship with the South, stating that “my parents and my family… are not Southerners” (line 7). He explains that this is a matter of his not being exposed to Southerners during his upbringing, pointing out that this is a matter relating to “the people who are around me during my childhood” (line 7). Through this deferral, Starlight is able to maintain a more neutral view of Southern identity, explaining that he is not a Southerner due to the backgrounds of the people he would have spent time with during his childhood, regardless of whether those interactions took place in the South, so he doesn’t rely on affective moves because he feels that his not being a Southerner is a result of circumstances out of his control, rather than a decision that he needed to justify in some way.

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Conclusions

This work may offer a potential model for further mixed-methods approaches to discourse analysis.
Overall, variation in the types of stances taken by the participants in this study were instrumental in allowing them the agency to offer a more complicated picture of trans life in the South. In some cases, participants rejected stigmatized characteristics that are associated with particular enregistered (Agha 2005) Southern identities, such as conservatism or anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment. In other cases, participants indicated that their Southern identity allows them to combat these dominant social narratives, rendering the diverse experiences of trans people in the South more visible.

Overall, variation in the types of stances taken by the participants in this study were instrumental in allowing them the agency to offer a more complicated picture of trans life in the South. In some cases, participants rejected stigmatized characteristics that are associated with particular enregistered (Agha 2005) Southern identities, such as conservatism or anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment. In other cases, participants indicated that their Southern identity allows them to combat these dominant social narratives, and through reclamations of Southern identity, were able to render the diverse experiences of trans people in the South more visible, pushing back on narratives that view Southern and trans identity as being mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, It is my hope that this study offers just one starting point for exploring how trans people define their identities, drawing on and representing their linguistic ingenuity in a way that lends them more agency in defining their relationship to Southern identity in particular. As part of this, I want to highlight that an important element of further work with transgender communities in the South is that we must center reciprocity as part of the research model. At a time when the threat of violence and legislation that trans and nonbinary people are feeling in the South is palpable, the question of how to both preserve their existence and celebrates their joy is ongoing. Knowing this, this analysis is part of a larger call to action to represent the experience of the trans community in research, but I also want to challenge both myself and everyone here to consider what reciprocity may look like for these communities, whether through collaborating with participants to create deliverables or create spaces that center our joy and expression, participating in mutual aid that works to fulfill the needs of those experiencing the most severe forms of marginalization in our communities, or participating in direct action and other forms of resistance.

Similarly, there is a need to continue to combat the metro-centric, white-centric, and northern-centric frames that have historically informed research in LGBTQIA+ communities. Many of the participants in this study were white, upper or middle class, and lived in relatively more urban areas within North Carolina, highlighting a large gap in understanding the diversity of trans experiences in the state. Deeper researcher engagement in collaborative work with trans people of color, low-income and working class trans people, and trans people in rural areas is necessary to address these methodological shortcomings and offer a more representative look at the breadth of trans life in the South. This is hopefully just one of many analyses I hope to work on for this corpus, and these are limitations I hope to continue to work through during that time.

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Agha, A. (2005). Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15(1), 38–59.

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Thank you to all of the wonderful trans and nonbinary people who shared their stories with me for this project. Your knowledge and experiences are powerful.

Also a special thank you to Dr. Robin Dodsworth for your quantitative know-how, Dr. Archie Crowley for being a wonderful co-researcher, Dr. Jason Swarts for advising this project, and to the faculty, friends, and family who sat through countless questions, practice presentations, and offered me ample support. It was all of you who made this project possible.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND SUPPORT OF TRANS LINGUISTIC WORK IN THE SOUTH!

And of course I really want to end on a sincere and deep thank you to the people who supported this project. Dr. Dodsworth was key in making these visualizations and regression tables possible, and I am super grateful to my advisor Dr. Swarts for teaching me this methodology while also allowing me to make it my own. I am also super grateful for having started this project with Dr. Crowley, I have been wanting to do corpus work with trans and nonbinary North Carolinians for years, and I could not ask for a better research partner to be doing this with. I think it takes a community to make linguistics research feasible, and I am grateful for those in my community who helped me get to this point. Finally, I want to offer a huge thank you to the participants who were open to trusting me with their stories and sharing their ingenuity and incredible linguistic knowledge.

With that said, I am happy to answer any questions you may have, I know we covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time!