Of lisps and lguistics: The power of the gay voice

Contents:

• GAY MALE SPEECH
• IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN
• THE GAY VOICE
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE
• GAY LISP
• HOMOSEXUáLNí MUžSKá řEč - GAY MALE SPEECH
• JAGS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE NFL COACH TO PUBLICLY COME OUT AS GAY

GAY MALE SPEECH

Summarize this article for a 10 years oldSHOW ALL QUESTIONSParticularly wh North Amerin English, [catn need] gay male speech has been the foc of numero morn stereotyp, as well as soclguistic studi.

Scientific rearch has unvered phoilly signifint featur produced by many gay men and monstrated that listeners accurately gus speakers' sexual orientatn at rat greater than chance.

[1] Historilly, gay male speech characteristics have been highly stigmatized and their age may be sometim d to a limed number of settgs outsi of the workplace or other public spac. Rearch do not support the notn that gay speech entirely adopts feme speech characteristics — rather, that selectively adopts some of those featur. [2] Gay speech characteristics appear to be learned (rather than nate) ways of speakg, like many aspects of language, though their origs and procs of adoptn by men rema unclear.

IS THERE A “GAY VOICE”?

Featur of lbian speech have also been nfirmed the 21st century, though they are far ls socially noticed than featur of gay male speech.

SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN

Drag queen speech is a further topic of rearch and, while some drag queens may also intify as gay men, a scriptn of their speech styl may not be so bary (gay vers straight). Not long after Thorpe broke up wh his boyiend, he began thkg about the way he speaks, and the way other gay men speak, and why both sudnly bothered him so much. He terviews gay public figur, cludg David Sedaris, Tim Gunn, Don Lemon, and Gee Takei, who have had to listen to themselv for a livg.

Gay adolcents, Thorpe pots out, often learn that the “tell” of their sexualy is their voic, even more so than physily—a limp wrist is easier to straighten out than an flectn. Thorpe talks to a straight iend who sounds “gay” (he grew up on an ashram, surround by women), and a gay iend who sounds “straight” (he has jock brothers).

THE GAY VOICE

“For many gay men, that’s the last vtige, that’s the last chunk of ternalized homophobia, is this hatred of how they sound, ” Dan Savage tells Thorpe. As gays and lbians ga cultural pal, helped along by equaly victori like the one jt hand down by the Supreme Court, “gay voice” will surely evolve, too.

The study of gay male speech has largely foced on fundamental equency and var quantifiable aspects of /s/ (Campbell-Kibler 2012, Mack and Munson 2012, Munson 2007, Zimman 2013). In a study of the speech of three gay men om California, however, Posva (2011) nclus that gay men may utilize salient aspects of regnal dialects to exprs their gayns.

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. The current work exam the lguistic relatnship between gayns and Southern New Hampshire iologi the speech of two 22-year-old gay men who grew up Rockgham County, New Hampshire.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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. Regardg atic featur of speech, rearchers have hypothized a femizatn of such characteristics homosexual men, but prev vtigatns have so far produced mixed rults.

To fill the gaps, we explored potential differenc atic featur of speech between homosexual and heterosexual native French men and vtigated whether the former showed a trend toward femizatn by parg theirs to that of heterosexual native French women.

Rults showed that homosexual men displayed signifintly higher pch modulatn patterns and ls breathy voic pared to heterosexual men, wh valu shifted toward those of heterosexual women. Distributns’ histograms of heterosexual women and homosexual and heterosexual men puted om the ordat of the first lear discrimant functn.

OF LISPS AND LGUISTICS: THE POWER OF THE GAY VOICE

Corneli, Brianna R., 'Gay (Whe) Male Speech and the E(race)sure of Inty', Kira Hall, and Rty Barrett (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexualy (onle edn, Oxford Amic, 10 July 2018),, accsed 28 July 2023. Although a notable body of work has emerged scribg gay male speech (GMS), s overlap wh Ain Amerin language (AAL) remas paratively unrstudied. Examg the importance of racial inty, particularly Blackns, to the nstctn of gay inty the Uned Stat, the chapter vtigat the treatment of GMS as whe by flt, wh the voic of gay men of lor nsired addive.

Inty bate language and sexualy studi ntributed to an unrstandg of gay inty as muny-based practice, thereby layg a necsary amework for the study of GMS. Although efforts to brg a muny-based unrstandg to gay inty have been groundbreakg, the lack of nsiratn of tersectnaly has erased ntributns to GMS om racially based language varieti, such as AAL.

After intifyg phoic characteristics that seem to make a man’s voice sound gay, their bt hunch is that some gay men may subnscly adopt certa female speech patterns. They want to know how men acquire this manner of speakg, and why – pecially when society so often stigmatiz those wh gay-soundg voic.

GAY LISP

” It’s a fascatg and nuanced film, which the filmmaker, David Thorpe,  his feelgs about his voice to look at attus toward homosexualy.

It rais a plited discsn about gay pri, lgerg homophobia, disguised misogyny, and the extent to which we all alter the image that we prent to the the film begs, Thorpe is disturbed bee he realiz he don’t like his voice any more. He rri out thoughtful nversatns wh his iends and proment gay and lbian figur – cludg Gee Takei, David Sedaris, Dan Savage, Margaret Cho and Don Lemon – about what means to “sound gay. But so dog, v everyone to thk about what their own voice says about who they are, where they me om, and where they want to science of “the gay voice”To start wh, the stereotypil “gay voice” isn’t necsarily a study published 2003, Ron Smyth, a lguist at the Universy of Toronto, found that participants readily separated rerdgs of 25 diverse voic to those who “sound gay” and those who “sound straight.

In Smyth's study, people rrectly gused a man’s sexualy about 60 percent of the time, only a ltle better than another small study at the Universy of Hawaii, both gay and straight listeners were equally as likely to misclassify people as gay or straight.

HOMOSEXUáLNí MUžSKá řEč - GAY MALE SPEECH

In fact, the straight men wh so-lled gay voic weren't aware that people thought they sound gay at turns out that what most people perceive as a stereotypil "gay voice" is jt a male voice that sounds more stereotypilly feme -- maly, higher pched and more melod. And that often has more to do wh the voic that a person intified wh as they grew up, rather than and other rearchers say some men, both gay and straight, velop more feme voic bee they are fluenced by women when they are young. If you've ever found yourself talkg to someone wh a different accent and gradually emulatg them, you're faiar wh the gay men, adoptg what's lled "mp" -- a theatril gay accent, like an old-school starlet -- n be a way of embracg their inty.

“As a hly mted gay man, I learned how mpg up uld be liberatg, ” Thorpe says the there may be more subtle ways that sexualy and our sense of self fluence our voic. Benjam Munson, who studi language and speech at the Universy of Mnota, found one study that gay men did e a slightly different pronunciatn than straight men. However, the difference wasn’t the stereotypil “gay voice, ” but a tenncy to e a more ntemporary, pan-Amerin accent, rather than the old-fashned Mnota accent (like  the movie “Fargo") says that the gay men he terviewed may have wanted to nvey an inty that is more stylish and cuttg edge.

“As speakers of a language, we have lots of eedom how we pronounce sounds … People explo that variatn to create different social meangs, " he those who are proud n still feel stigma“Do I Sound Gay? ” shows that even men who are out and proud may still rry wh them some shame about havg a stereotypil “gay voice, ” even if those feelgs are Savage, a gay activist and thor, argu  the film that this is a natural nsequence of boys beg bullied for walkg and talkg a certa way when they are young.

JAGS ASSISTANT KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE NFL COACH TO PUBLICLY COME OUT AS GAY

“[B]ee we do still live a misogynist and sexist culture, people cricize men who are effemate, whether or not they are gay, " says Thorpse. "“This is really an issue of genr that then be an issue of sexual orientatn that then be an issue of homophobia, " Thorpe said. He grew up the Bible Belt the 1980s, when homosexualy was often nsired evil and the e of a new plague lled AIDS, Thorpe says.

As Thorpe pots out the film, there have long been public entertaers or artists wh stereotypilly “gay voic” – Liberace or Tman Capote, for example -- but few people openly talked about their when characters wh “gay” mannerisms or voic appeared popular culture, they were sometim d wh negative or sid the 1940s on, Amerin film saw the rise of a sni, supercil, and vaguely gay villa, startg wh the manipulative Clifton Webb the tective noir film “Lra.

” That tradn of the effete, aristocratic villa has lived example, film historian Richard Barrs argu  the film that many of the Disney villas have simperg voic or mannerisms that are subtly – or not so subtly – stereotypilly gay, cludg Prce John "Rob Hood, " Sr "The Ln Kg, " and many more, In an terview, Thorpe poted out what he viewed as one particularly egreg example – the bad guy the 2012 Disney animated film “Wreck-It Ralph. He pots to Hollywood's proment “gaylebri, ” like Jse Tyler Fergon and Neil Patrick Harris, and young gay YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley, Kgsley and Lohanthony. "We are pneers our time changg societal perceptn of what means to be gay, ” Gee Takei, who played Sulu "Star Trek, " says the homophobia still affects Hollywood.