Can women "sound gay"?: A sociophonetic study of /s/ and pitch of gay and straight British-English speaking women

This thesis presents a third wave variationist project, influenced by queer linguistics, that considers the idea of a “gay voice” for female English speakers in Yorkshire, England. This work demonstrates the complexity of identity and why it is important that researchers look past macro-social categories alone, and consider the nuance of local communities. Two studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between women’s sexual orientation and speech: a production study and a perception study. The production study analysed data from 22 participants, from Yorkshire, who identified as female, white, between the ages of 21 and 46, and 12 identified as gay and 10 as straight. It was found that while there were some significant differences between gay and straight speakers based on F0 and /s/ centre of gravity measurements, there were more substantial differences between participants that were both gay and part of a local football team than participants that were either straight or not on the team. The second study on the perception of a “gay voice” for women asked participants to rate qualities such as “homosexual” and “feminine” in order to understand how stimuli with digitally altered F0 would be perceived. Data reveals that sentences with a lowered F0 were perceived as sounding more “homosexual” than stimuli with a raised F0, indicating that a lower F0 may be associated with a “gay voice” for women. However, the nuance of the participants had a significant impact on how they rated these characteristics. This in-depth analysis of how speakers may perform their sexual orientation and how listeners may perceive sexual orientation demonstrates the complexity of language and identity. It was found that local communities are significant in presenting a specific gay identity and how important it is to look at the intersection of many factors to fully understand linguistic variation.