The Queen’s English: An Alternative, Biosocial Hypothesis for the Distinctive Features of “Gay Speech”

Abstract

Popular stereotypes concerning the speech of homosexuals typically attribute speech patterns characteristic of the opposite-sex, i.e., broadly feminized speech in gay men and broadly masculinized speech in lesbian women. A small body of recent empirical research has begun to address the subject more systematically and to consider specific mechanistic hypotheses to account for the potentially distinctive features of homosexual speech. Results do not yet fully endorse the stereotypes but they do not entirely discount them either; nor do they cleanly favor any single mechanistic hypothesis. To contribute to this growing body of research, we report acoustic analyses of 2,875 vowel sounds from a balanced set of 125 speakers representing heterosexual and homosexual individuals of each sex from southern Alberta, Canada. Analyses focused on voice pitch and formant frequencies which together determine the principle perceptual features of vowels. There was no significant difference in mean voice pitch between heterosexual and homosexual men or between heterosexual and homosexual women, but there were significant differences in the formant frequencies of vowels produced by both homosexual groups compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Formant frequency differences were specific to only certain vowel sounds and some could be attributed to basic differences in body size between heterosexual and homosexual speakers. The remaining formant frequency differences were not obviously due to differences in vocal tract anatomy between heterosexual and homosexual speakers, nor did they reflect global feminization or masculinization of vowel production patterns in homosexual men and women, respectively. The vowel-specific differences observed could reflect social modeling processes in which only certain speech patterns of the opposite-sex, or of same-sex homosexuals, are selectively adopted. However, we introduce an alternative biosocial hypothesis, specifically that the distinctive, vowel-specific features of homosexual speakers relative to heterosexual speakers arise incidentally as a product of broader psychobehavioral differences between the two groups that are, in turn, continuous with and flow from the physiological processes that affect sexual orientation to begin with.

Judgments of self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers: Which phonemes are most salient in determining sexual orientation?

“…However, discriminability was strongest after hearing a vowel, but inconsistent after hearing a consonant. Consistent with this finding, other researchers (Munson et al, 2006; Pierrehumbert et al, 2004; Rendell et al, 2008) concluded that self-identified gay and heterosexual men tended to produce /æ/, /ɑ/, /i/, /iː/, /ʌ/, /oʊ/, /uː/, /ə/, and /ε/ differently. All of these vowels, except /i/, /ʌ/, and /ə/, were included in the present experiment.…”

“…To accomplish this objective, participants heard a vowel or a consonant, and then indicated whether the speaker sounded gay or heterosexual. Prior studies have shown that gay and heterosexual male speakers tend to produce certain vowels (Munson et al, 2006; Pierrehumbert et al, 2004; Rendell et al, 2008) and /s/ differently (Crist, 1997; Linville, 1998; Munson et al, 2006). It has also been demonstrated that listeners rely on vowels (Munson et al, 2006) and /s/ (Linville, 1998; Munson et al, 2006) to form their sexual orientation judgments.…”

“…These three investigations found production differences with /æ/, as in gas , whereas results for other vowels were inconsistent. Pierrehumbert et al (2004) found that gay and heterosexual men produced /ɑ/, as in box , and /i/, as in feet , differently, while Rendall et al (2008) found differences among /iː/, /ʌ/, as in but , /oʊ/, as in boat , /uː/, as in boot , and /ə/, as in the . Munson et al (2006) found differences for /ε/, as in bell .…”

“…Experimental evidence indicates that gay and heterosexual male talkers of both American English (Munson et al, 2006; Pierrehumbert, Bent, Munson, Bradlow, & Bailey, 2004) and Canadian English (Rendell, Vasey, & McKenzie, 2008) tend to produce certain vowels differently. These three investigations found production differences with /æ/, as in gas , whereas results for other vowels were inconsistent.…”

Lavender Lessons Learned; Or, What Sexuality Can Teach Us About Phonetic Variation

“…indeed, many studies have shown that listeners are willing to judge a talker's sexual orientation from content-neutral samples (Gaudio 1994;Linville 1998;Smyth, jacobs, and Rogers 2003;Rendall, Vasey, and mcKenzie 2008). Such findings are complicated by the fact that these studies and many others have also found that listeners are willing to speculate on a variety of attributes about talkers based on phonetic characteristics of speech alone and that judgments of sexual orientation are often correlated with judgments of other attributes of the same talkers.…”