Lbian and Gay Male Language Use: A Cril Review of the Lerature on JSTOR

Contents:

• THE GAY VOICE
• GAY SLANG 101
• FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO 'SOUND GAY'
• WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’
• GAY- AND LBIAN-SOUNDG AUDORY CU ELIC STEREOTYPG AND DISCRIMATN
• RSIAN GAY SLANG
• SPEECH ATIC FEATUR: A COMPARISON OF GAY MEN, HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN

THE GAY VOICE

And many feel that this word plac undue emphasis on sexual activy, or that sounds overly clil.” In fact, the term homosexual was liberately rejected by early gay rights activists bee, acrdg to The New York Tim, “they did not want to be intified as exclively sexual begs.”.

GAY SLANG 101

Partially rponse to Stonewall, 1970, queer activists New York Cy anized a march to Central Park wh the theme “Gay Pri.” A more prehensive history of the Stonewall Rt or the Stonewall Uprisg n be found our Pri Month explaer.

On Thorpe's gay iends also stgglg to accept their voic Thorpe: One of the revelatns of makg this film was that this is somethg that had always bothered me and every time, basilly, I talk to a gay man I would fd out that he also had eher spent a lot of time thkg about his voice or ed to be self-nsc about his voice or still felt self-nsc about his voice. 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.

FILMMAKER AND SPEECH PATHOLOGIST WEIGH IN ON WHAT IT 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.

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.

WHAT MEANS TO ‘SOUND GAY’

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. ” 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.

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.

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).

RSIAN GAY SLANG

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.

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

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).

We expected that gay and lbian speakers would be chosen ls equently than their heterosexual unterparts and that this bias would be particularly pronounced for gay men, given that homophobia is generally stronger toward gay mal than toward lbians (Kilianski, 2003). 85) would be associated wh the gree of stereotypg and the choice of the teractn partner, we first lculated a Stereotypg Inx for each characteristic (sport, field of studi, tras) by summg the attributn of genr-typil (m atypil) characteristics to heterosexual and of genr-atypil (m typil) characteristics to the gay/lbian speaker. Alternatively, sexual orientatn tegorizatn may play no role at all, but perceivers may simply fd the male voice ls mascule and the female voice ls feme and therefore attribute rrpondg terts and tras to that person, whout ferrg that the person was gay or lbian.