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Article published In: Journal of Language and Sexuality
Vol. 13:1 (2024) ► pp.24–50

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Bisexuality in experimental sociophonetics

Ideologies and implications

 | University of CaliforniaSanta BarbaraCA, USA
Published online: 30 January 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.00030.wil
Abstract
The belief that there is a relationship between sexuality and speech has inspired a vast body of linguistic research on lesbian- and gay-sounding voices (Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2007. Accent, (ING), and the social logic of listener perceptions. American Speech 82(1): 32–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Gaudio, Rudolf P. 1994. Sounding gay: Pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men. American Speech 69(1): 30–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Levon, Erez. 2006. Hearing “gay”: Prosody, interpretation, and the affective judgements of men’s speech. American Speech 8(1): 56–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Moonwomon-Baird, Birch. 1997. Towards the study of lesbian speech. In Queerly Phrased, Anna Livia & Kira Hall (eds), 202–213. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Munson, Benjamin, McDonald, Elizabeth C., DeBoe, Nancy L. & White, Aubrey R. 2006a. The acoustic and perceptual bases of judgements of women and men’s sexual orientation from read speech. Journal of Phonetics 341: 202–240. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Munson, Benjamin, Jefferson, Sarah V. & McDonald, Elizabeth C. 2006b. The influence of perceived sexual orientation on fricative identification. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 1191: 2427–2437. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Pierrehumbert, Janet B., Bent, Tessa, Munson, Benjamin, Bradlow, Anne R. & Bailey, J. Michael. 2004. The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production (L). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116(4): 1905–1908. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Smyth, Ron, Jacobs, Greg & Rogers, Henry. 2003. Male voices and perceived sexual orientation: An experimental and theoretical approach. Language in Society 32(3): 329–350. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2013. Hegemonic masculinity and the variability of gay-sounding speech: The perceived sexuality of transgender men. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2(1): 1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Bisexuality is conspicuously absent in this literature. This article analyzes bisexual English speakers’ productions of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ relative to lesbian, gay, and straight speakers using linear mixed-effects regression modeling. A qualitative analysis of post-test participant information surveys contextualizes the statistical findings. The quantitative and qualitative results suggest that bisexual women and men do not pattern consistently with each other or lesbian, gay, or straight speakers. The analysis highlights the extent to which ideologies of sexuality, gender, and normativity inform experimental sociophonetic research practice.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sexuality and the voice
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Stimuli
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Analysis
    • 3.5Statistical methodology
  • 4.Statistical results
    • 4.1Center of gravity model
    • 4.2COG post-hoc pairwise comparisons
    • 4.3Skew model
    • 4.4Duration model
    • 4.5Duration post-hoc pairwise comparisons
    • 4.6Summary of statistical results
  • 5.Qualitative analysis of post-test surveys
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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