Voice Changes Meaning: The Role of Gay- Versus Straight-Sounding Voices in Sentence Interpretation

Abstract

Utterances reveal not only semantic information but also information about the speaker’s social category membership, including sexual orientation. In four studies ( N = 345), we investigated how the meaning of what is being said changes as a function of the speaker’s voice. In Studies 1a/1b, gay- and straight-sounding voices uttered the same sentences. Listeners indicated the likelihood that the speaker was referring to one among two target objects varying along gender-stereotypical characteristics. Listeners envisaged a more “feminine” object when the sentence was uttered by a gay-sounding speaker, and a more “masculine” object when the speaker sounded heterosexual. In Studies 2a/2b, listeners were asked to disambiguate sentences that involved a stereotypical behavior and were open to different interpretations. Listeners disambiguated the sentences by interpreting the action in relation to sexual-orientation information conveyed by voice. Results show that the speaker’s voice changes the subjective meaning of sentences, aligning it to gender-stereotypical expectations.

When “Sometimes” Means “Often”: How Stereotypes Affect Interpretations of Quantitative Expressions

“…Our findings align with previous work showing that people use stereotypes to interpret ambiguous expressions (Fasoli et al, 2020; Pexman & Olineck, 2002) and descriptions of target persons (Dunning & Sherman, 1997; Gawronski et al, 2003; Kunda & Sherman-Williams, 1993; Sagar & Schofield, 1980). Where this earlier work mainly focused on biased interpretations of the content of behavior descriptions (e.g., hitting somebody ; Kunda & Sherman-Williams, 1993), the present findings demonstrate how stereotypes affect interpretations of the generally applicable lexical category of quantity expressions.…”

The Effects of Language-Related Misunderstanding at Work

“…These findings connect to the dual-route approach to speech perception (Sumner, Kim, King, & McGowan, 2014), a model that delineates how receivers extract both linguistic (lexical meaning) and social (identity markers) information from speech. In that vein, Fasoli, Maass, Karniol, Antonio, and Sulpizio (2020) found that receivers interpreted gay- and straight-sounding speaker messages in a way that was consistent with identity marker stereotypes. Across four studies, receivers’ inferences about speakers’ voices were based on oversimplified and often stereotypical knowledge about the speakers’ identity (i.e., sexual orientation).…”

Can agentic messages help? Linguistic strategies to counteract voice‐based sexual orientation discrimination

“…To our knowledge, this is the first research examining the interplay between voice and message that went beyond mere information processing and message interpretation (Fasoli et al., 2020; Nygaard et al., 2009). Moreover, it is the first cross‐cultural/linguistic research on the consequences of auditory gaydar.…”