Pitch range and women's sexual orientation

Abstract

RACHELLEWAKSLER'------------------------ Pitch range and women's sexual orientationAbstract. The interaction between intonational patterns and speaker gender has long been noted in the language and gender literature (e.g., Brend 1972, Lakoff 1975, McConnell-Ginet 1983, Ohara 1992. It has also been hypothesized (Moonwomon 1985, Queen 1997) that intonation may be a locus of difference between lesbian and heterosexual women's speech. This paper investigates the question of whether there is an interaction between pitch range and sexual orientation in women. An experiment was carried out in San Francisco in which 24 lesbians and straight women were individually audiotaped recounting the plot of the movie The Wizard of Oz. Data are thus controlled as much as possible for content and communicative situation, while remaining as natural speech. Acoustic analysis of the recordings suggests that pitch range is not a distinguishing factor for female sexual orientation.

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

“…For example, several studies of heterosexual and homosexual speakers have reported few differences in voice pitch (Gaudio, 1994;Lerman & Damste, 1969;Linville, 1998;Waksler, 2001). Because voice pitch is ultimately traceable to the size of the larynx, this outcome suggests that there are no basic differences in the size of the laryngeal apparatus between heterosexual and homosexual speakers.…”

“…Some homosexual men spoke with relatively high voice pitch but so too did some heterosexual men. Subsequent studies have similarly failed to find robust differences in mean voice pitch between homosexual men and women and their heterosexual counterparts, although some have reported differences in longer-term pitch modulation patterns and other elements of prosody (Gaudio, 1994;Munson, McDonald, DeBoe, & White, 2006;Rogers, Jacobs, & Smyth, 2001;Smyth, Jacobs, & Rogers, 2003;Waksler, 2001). Hence, although some homosexual men and women may speak with a relatively high or low voice pitch, respectively, or with more exaggerated or attenuated pitch modulation in ways reminiscent of the opposite-sex, these most basic dimensions of the stereotypes of homosexual men and women appear not to be entirely reliable.…”

“…Hazan & Markham, 2004). The stereotype for lesbian women is less entrenched but generally mirrors the pattern attributed to gay men and so is supposed to entail broadly masculinized speech patterns including lower voice pitch, less variable or extreme intonation patterns, and more rapid speech delivery or less precise articulations that yield speech that is regarded as less clear (Moonwoman-Baird, 1997;Waksler, 2001).…”

Sociolinguistic Horizons: Language and Sexuality

“…In particular, differences in the fundamental frequency (i.e. pitch), which have been widely theorized as indexical of sexual orientation (with gay men assumed to have greater pitch range than straight men and lesbians assumed to have narrower pitch ranges than straight women), have been inconclusive and few significant differences in pitch range have been found (Gaudio 1994; Moonwomon 1997; Waksler 2001; Smyth et al. 2003; Levon 2006).…”

“…In particular, differences in the fundamental frequency (i.e. pitch), which have been widely theorized as indexical of sexual orientation (with gay men assumed to have greater pitch range than straight men and lesbians assumed to have narrower pitch ranges than straight women), have been inconclusive and few significant differences in pitch range have been found (Gaudio 1994;Moonwomon 1997;Waksler 2001;Smyth et al 2003;Levon 2006). 11 Pierrehumbert et al (2004) found, however, that there were specific differences in the vowel spaces of speakers who identified themselves with different sexual orientations and concluded that those differences provided evidence that gay men and lesbians' manipulations of the vocal tract are learned behavior rather than somehow biological in nature.…”