"Gay Male Speech and Dialects Motn: Constctg Lguistic Inti" by Hayn P. Stson

Contents:

• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?
• ABOUT THE CENTERSCE 1983 THE CENTER HAS BEEN SUPPORTG, FOSTERG AND CELEBRATG THE LGBT MUNY OF NEW YORK CY. FD MORE RMATN ON AND OUR WORK ABOUT THE CENTER. VIS ABOUT THE CENTEROUR MISSNCYBER CENTERCENTER HISTORYRACE EQUYMEDIA CENTERLEARSHIP & STAFFEMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNICORPORATE PARTNERSHIPSANNUAL REPORTS & FANCIAL INFORMATNCONTACT USHOURS & LOTNSEMAPSUPPORT THE CENTER
• "GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY
• GAY
• GAY MALE SPEECH PATTERNS
• GAY- AND LBIAN-SOUNDG AUDORY CU ELIC STEREOTYPG AND DISCRIMATN
• TOLD NOT TO SAY ‘GAY’ GRADUATN SPEECH, HE MA HIS POT ANYWAY

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO SOUND GAY?

The film is stctured around his personal qut to get rid of his “gay voice”—recently sgle and middle-aged, David Thorpe began to fd his voice a source of anxiety, worryg turned off potential lovers—which grounds what uld otherwise have been a disparate web of amic theori and talkg heads.

That spurred him to look more systematilly at the gay voice self; eventually he realized he’d found somethg signifint to say about the subject, a talogue of people reflectg about the history, prevalence, signifince, and science of the voice ’s clear om his enthiasm and breadth of knowledge that Thorpe, a wrer wh an quisive personaly and a voice I found entirely pleasant, has enough material for a whole seri on the subject.

” In the film, Thorpe nsults a speech therapist, a voice ach, several lguists and anthropologists, a film historian, gay actors, and famo queer celebri cludg David Sedaris, Dan Savage, Tim Gunn, Don Lemon, Gee Takei, and Margaret Cho. Admtg that a roomful of gay voic n be annoyg giv space to pick apart anxieti—which parts are jt annoyance at other people’s nversatns, and which are tied to toxic the film velops, be apparent that much of what we intify as a gay voice is a characteristilly feme voice spoken by a man. To prove his pot, Thorpe shows a straight man who was raised on an ashram by a group of women, who talks a voice that would tonate most people’s gaydar; but he also troduc to a gay man raised the suburbs wh five macho brothers who has the sort of voice that porn actors strive for.

ABOUT THE CENTERSCE 1983 THE CENTER HAS BEEN SUPPORTG, FOSTERG AND CELEBRATG THE LGBT MUNY OF NEW YORK CY. FD MORE RMATN ON AND OUR WORK ABOUT THE CENTER. VIS ABOUT THE CENTEROUR MISSNCYBER CENTERCENTER HISTORYRACE EQUYMEDIA CENTERLEARSHIP & STAFFEMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNICORPORATE PARTNERSHIPSANNUAL REPORTS & FANCIAL INFORMATNCONTACT USHOURS & LOTNSEMAPSUPPORT THE CENTER

Three exampl of language e mastream society are analysed: ‘retard’ which evolved om scientific diagnosis to sult; ‘gay’ as a rogatory adjective wh popular culture; and, the way language around suici is ed to both trivialise and stigmatise those who are suicidal, as well as those who are bereaved. In addn to the earlier meang of gay beg ‘happy’, ‘reee’ and ‘ivolo’ (1st meang), and to a later meang of gay beg synonymo wh ‘homosexual’ (2nd meang), appears that gay is now beg unrstood by young people to mean ‘stupid’, ‘lame’ or ‘borg’, as ‘That shirt is so gay’, or ‘How gay is that?

"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY"GAY": TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY

Two studi were performed to ascerta who is aware of this new meang of gay wh ntemporary Atralian society (Study 1) and to exame the 3rd meang more tail, by focsg on how young people om Canberra (Atralia), aged 18 – 30, currently unrstand the word gay (Study 2). The rults of Study 1 showed that the word gay functns as a soclguistic variable wh olr people (60+) beg more likely to terpret gay as havg the 1st meang, whereas younger people (18 – 30 year olds) were more likely to terpret gay as havg the 3rd meang. Studyg this new meang of the word gay is important for unrstandg semantic change and disverg current language trends ntemporary Atralian article prents some of the advanc legal support for addrsg homophobia and transphobia school settgs and provis a crique of school‐based polici that foc on the phenomena as particular cints volvg bulli and victims.

Drawg primarily on data om the No Outsirs project, where primary teachers throughout the UK have llaborated to promote lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr (LGBT) equali their schools and classrooms, the thors argue that heteronormativy should be addrsed by purposefully promotg the equaly of LGBT people as part of a broar whole school ethos that celebrat diversy and challeng equi of all English File Third Edn Workbook rerc what is learned each English File lson, and n be ed as extra practice durg class, or set as homework. Morn velopments Attus toward homosexualy are generally flux, partially as a rult of creased polil activism (see gay rights movement) and efforts by homosexuals to be seen not as aberrant personali but as differg om “normal” dividuals only their sexual orientatn. The nflictg views of homosexualy—as a variant but normal human sexual behavur on one hand, and as psychologilly viant behavur on the other—rema prent most societi the 21st century, but they have been largely rolved ( the profsnal sense) most veloped untri.

GAY

The Ksey report of 1948, for example, found that 30 percent of adult Amerin mal among Ksey’s subjects had engaged some homosexual activy and that 10 percent reported that their sexual practice had been exclively homosexual for a perd of at least three years between the ag of 16 and 55. In rponse to their activism, many jurisdictns enacted laws banng discrimatn agast homosexuals, and an creasg number of employers Ameri and European untri agreed to offer “domtic partner” benefs siar to the health re, life surance and, some s, pensn benefs available to heterosexual married upl. In one such stance, Albania repealed s sodomy statut 1995, and gay upl Amsterdam 2001 were legally married unr the same laws that ern heterosexual marriage (rather than unr laws that allowed them to “register” or form “domtic” partnerships).

However, most shared wh gay men the sire to have a secure place the world muny at large, unchallenged by the fear of vlence, the stggle for equal treatment unr the law, the attempt to silence, and any other form of civil behavur that impos send-class article was most recently revised and updated by Alison Eldridge. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOp-Ed ContributorNormal as FolkJune 21, 2012Ann Arbor, ’S gay pri month aga, and that means ’s time for the straight media to liver s annual state-of-the-gay experience is any gui, this exercise will volve a lot of triumphalism about the progrs of the gay movement, as measured by the creasg cultural assiatn of young lbians and gay men to Amerin society as a men particular, who ed to ighten the hors wh flamboyant displays of sexual outlawry, genr treason and fabulons, have supposedly dropped their signia of tribal belongg and joed the mastream.

Olr gay men may still thrill to torch songs, show tun, classic Hollywood melodramas and Lalique; they may still spend hours arrangg the furnure jt all that foofy stuff looks irrelevant to morn gay men, who don’t see themselv as belongg to a separate culture, let alone such a queeny one. At least sce the 1970s, gay men have been drawg vid generatnal parisons between gay boys their teens and 20s — morn, liberated, enlightened, untouched by gay culture, “utterly distguishable om straight boys” and “pletely lm about beg gay” (as Andrew Holleran put his 1978 novel, “Dancer From the Dance”) — and olr gay men, fanatilly attached to an outdated gay culture and nvced that is the only gay culture there is. (Of urse, those sorry gay men their 30s and 40s, who allegedly clg to an outmod, passé versn of gay culture, mt be the very same people who, only a few years earlier, were those pneerg gay teenagers, takg their first nocent steps a brave new world whout homophobia, ignorant of gay culture and different to .

GAY MALE SPEECH PATTERNS

Such genr-viant styl make some gay men nervo, not only bee they impugn their virily, but also bee they rell those hoary Victorian fns of homosexualy as a ngenal abnormaly volvg a pathologil reversal of sex rol — a mental illns. Instead of worryg that the feme associatns of diva worship, terr ratg or the performg arts may make gay male psychology look diseased, the real qutn we should ask about gay style is what s refal of nonil masculy achiev and what enabl s practners, straight or gay, to quire to melodrama, mp, irony, drag, bodybuildg or Art De as “gay” styl is to seek the ntent of gay culture s practic — to scribe the terventn gay culture mak the world as is given. The stylistic rrelatn between gayns and certa regnal dialects supports Eckert’s (2008) argument that lguistic styl are centered around iologi, rather than rigid tegoril inti and Posva (2011) urg that this phenomenon be studied further.

I then quantatively analyzed the speakers’ e and/or avoidance of phoic variabl (cludg var vowels and quali of /s/) that have been shown to be perceptually and/or productively salient gay male speech or regnal dialectology Southern New Hampshire. The first was that the speakers’ /s/ was signifintly “gayer soundg” the readg task than the terview and when talkg about beg gay than not, showg an iologil lk (at least for the speakers) between “gay soundg” speech and “proper” speech the readg tasks.

GAY- AND LBIAN-SOUNDG AUDORY CU ELIC STEREOTYPG AND DISCRIMATN

Keywords: Stereotyp, Discrimatn, Sexual orientatn, “Gaydar”IntroductnSexual orientatn is a social tegory that, differently om many others that are signaled by clear visual featur such as sk lor, is not ascertaed until the person self-disclos.

Yet, people tegorize dividuals as gay or heterosexual on the basis of direct cu, cludg their physil appearance, their body language, and their vol characteristics (Rieger, Lsenmeier, Gygax, Garcia, & Bailey, 2010; Rule, 2017; Shelp, 2002). Detectn of Sexual OrientatnThe above distctn between tegory- and feature-based procs is important, as rearch on tegorizatn of sexual orientatn has provid mixed rults wh regard to people’s abily to tect sexual inty (so lled “gaydar”). However, other studi have often disproven this claim and suggted that people distguish between gay and heterosexual dividuals on the basis of the stereotypil ia of how gays appear or sound (Smyth et al., 2003; Sulpiz et al., 2015).

TOLD NOT TO SAY ‘GAY’ GRADUATN SPEECH, HE MA HIS POT ANYWAY

Consequenc of Perceivg Sexual Orientatn om VoiceAlthough prr rearch has largely been mute on this issue, there is reason to believe that havg a gay- or lbian-soundg voice may have nsequenc for how the speaker is perceived, evaluated, and treated by others. In particular, we refer to stereotypg as the procs of attributg genr-atypil tras, characteristics, and terts to a person based on the fact that gay men are ually associated wh femy and lbian women wh masculy (Blashill & Powlishta, 2009; Ke & Dex, 1987).

Hence, this work, stereotypg refers to an attributnal procs irrpective of whether the associatns reflect actual differenc between gays/lbians and heterosexuals (see Deve, 1989; Judd & Park, 1993), our studi vtigated discrimatory behavrs that may emerge a work-related ntext and specifilly the hirg procs. Discrimatn of gay/lbian dividuals at work and hirg procs is mon (Ahmed, Anrsson, & Hammarstedt, 2013; Badgett, L, Sears, & Ho, 2007; Patacchi, Raga, & Zenou, 2014), and even direct cu such as beg volved a LGBT associatn creas chanc to get appoted for a job (Tilcsik, 2011). Although the role of appearance job terviews is well known (Atks & Kent, 1988; Juodvalkis, Grefer, Hogue, Svyantek, & DeLamarter, 2003), remas unclear whether a gay-/lbian-soundg voice fluenc the hirg procs and whether do so specifilly for high-stat mascule jobs that require learship abili.

Therefore, rather than selectg larger sampl of voic that are more or ls reprentative of the gay or heterosexual populatn (as is generally done studi on “gaydar”), we opted for a different rearch strategy by purposefully selectg, on the basis of prr rearch, a small sample of voic that had a relatively high likelihood of beg perceived as gay vers heterosexual. Th, our tert ncerns how people react to “prototypil” gay or heterosexual voic, whout makg any claims about the reprentativens of the 1: Inferrg Interts and Tras om VoiceIn Study 1, we examed whether heterosexual listeners ma stereotypil attributns le wh the speakers’ perceived sexual orientatn. As genr versn theory (Ke & Dex, 1987) suggts that gay/lbian dividuals are perceived siar to oppose-sex heterosexuals, we hypothized that listeners would attribute more feme (and fewer mascule) sports, fields of study, and tras to gay than to straight male speakers (Study 1a).