Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers: Which Phonemes are Most Salient in Determining Sexual Orientation?
- UNCP Author/Contributor (non-UNCP co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Dr. Erik Tracy, Assitant Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP )
- Web Site: http://www.uncp.edu/academics/library
Abstract: While numerous studies have demonstrated that a male speaker’s sexual orientation can be identified from relatively long passages of speech, few studies have evaluated whether listeners can determine sexual orientation when presented with word-length stimuli. If listeners are able to distinguish between self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers of American English, it is unclear whether they form their judgments based on a phoneme, such as a vowel or consonant, or multiple phonemes, such as a vowel and a consonant. In this study, we first found that listeners can distinguish between self-identified gay and heterosexual speakers of American English upon hearing word-length stimuli. We extended these results in a separate experiment to demonstrate that listeners primarily rely on vowels, and to some extent consonants, when forming their judgments. Listeners were able to differentiate between the two groups of speakers for each of the vowels and three of the seven consonants presented. In a follow-up experiment we found evidence that listeners’ judgments improved if they were presented with multiple phonemes, such as a vowel and /s/. These results provide important information about how different phonemes can provide discriminant information about a male speaker’s sexual orientation.
Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers: Which Phonemes are Most Salient in Determining Sexual Orientation?
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Created on 2/12/2016
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Journal of Phonetics 52 (September 2015)
- Language: English
- Date: 2015
- Keywords
- Indexical Characteristics, Sexual Orientation, Gay and Heterosexual Male Speech, Vowels and Consonants, Sociophonetics
| Title | Location & Link | Type of Relationship |
| Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 1 | http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 1.pdf | The described resource is a physical or logical part of the related resource. |
| Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 2 | http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 2.pdf | The described resource is a physical or logical part of the related resource. |
| Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 3 | http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 3.pdf | The described resource is a physical or logical part of the related resource. |
| Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 4 | http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 4.pdf | The described resource is a physical or logical part of the related resource. |
| Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 5 | http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 5.pdf | The described resource is a physical or logical part of the related resource. |
| Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 6 | http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncp/f/Judgments of Self-Identified Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers_Figure 6.pdf | The described resource is a physical or logical part of the related resource. |