Clip Voice: Misogyny and the Renegotiation of a Gendered Vocal Style in Chinese Digital Discourse

ABSTRACT The participatory culture of social media allows women's voices to be heard but also parodied and policed. On Chinese social media platforms, where performers rapidly adopt and transform vocal trends for engagement, discourse on gendered vocal styles has proliferated. This study examines the phenomenon of “clip voice,” a newly enregistered feminine vocal style in China characterized by high pitch and creaky phonation. Using quantitative acoustic analysis and qualitative analysis of online videos and associated metalinguistic commentary, we trace the enregisterment and evolution of clip voice. Specifically, we demonstrate how clip voice is renegotiated to reinforce stereotypes of infantilized femininity by drawing upon tactics of denaturalization and recruiting features and meanings associated with sajiao , a more established feminine style. These findings highlight the ways in which the evolution and evaluation of gendered registers on social media not only reflect but also reinforce societal misogyny.