ABSTRACT
The study of variation is by definition a quantitative enterprise, and the challenge is always to go beyond the descriptive power of numbers to explanation, seeking to understand the relations among levels of social structure from the macrosocial to practice on the ground. We view gender and sexuality as performative, and seek ways to operationalise quantitative variation studies in a more fluid context. We therefore organise the discussion around the two binaries that have dominated thought in the variation community and that are particularly problematic: gender as a male–female binary, and sexuality as a queer–straight binary. Through an extended discussion of creaky voice, we argue in this chapter that the social meaning of variation mediates the space between linguistic practice in situated interaction and the emergence of macrosocial categories corresponding to gender and sexuality. Taking a meaning-based approach to variation makes possible (quantitative) analyses that take stock of gender and sexuality without reducing either to categories that may not be at issue in the interactional contexts in which variation is produced.
