Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Sexuality
Vol. 6:1 (2017) ► pp.128–176

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Style shifting and the phonetic performance of gay vs. straight

A case study from French

 | University of California, Davis, USA
Published online: 22 June 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.6.1.05rus
Abstract
This article examines the phonetic characteristics of speech performed in straight and gay styles by French males. Analysis considers features shown in other languages or in antecedent literature to be associated with perceptions of sexual identity: segmental quality (vowels, /s/, liquids), suprasegmental features (pitch, duration), and a number of language-specific variables. Results suggest that straight performances are characterized by decreased segmental duration and gay performances by differential use of vowel space, especially F2, nasal vowel duration, and fundamental frequency. A closing section provides comparison of these results to previous study and to other languages, while also addressing epistemological concerns raised by questions of identity, performance, and linguistic form.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Methodology and foci
    • 3.1Subject recruitment and selection
    • 3.2Stimuli and recording
    • 3.3Phonemic and phonetic variables
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Suprasegmentals
    • 4.2Consonants
    • 4.3Vowels
    • 4.4Synthesis
  • 5.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
References
Beddor, Patrice Speeter & Hawkins, Sarah. 1990. The influence of spectral prominence of perceived vowel quality. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 871: 2684–2704. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(2): 145–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Back in style: Reworking audience design. In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, Penelope Eckert & John Rickford (eds), 139–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourgeois, Jacynthe & Quillet, Natalie C. 2004. Les différences vocaliques chez les locuteurs hétérosexuels et homosexuels. Colloque des Étudiantes et Étudiants en Science du Langage 81: 119–138.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don. 2003. Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. Language, situation, and the relational self: Theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics. In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, Penelope Eckert & John R. Rickford (eds), 185–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crist, Sean. 1997. Duration of onset consonants in gay male stereotyped speech. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4(3): 53–70.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delattre, Pierre. 1959. Rapports entre la durée vocalique, le timbre et la structure syllabique en français. The French Review 32(6): 547–552.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope & Podesva, Robert J. 2011. Sociophonetics and sexuality: Toward a symbiosis of sociolinguistics and laboratory phonology. American Speech 86(1): 6–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Encrevé, Pierre. 1988. La Liaison Avec ou Sans Enchainement: Phonologie Tridimensionnelle et Usage du Français. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foulkes, Paul. 2010. Exploring social-indexical knowledge: A long past but a short history. Journal of Laboratory Phonology 11: 5–39.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foulkes, Paul & Docherty, Gerard. 2006. The social life of phonetics and phonology. Journal of Phonetics 341: 409–438. 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
Guzik, Karita M. 2006. Acoustic analysis of phonetic parameters of less masculine sounding German speech. Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung Universität Kiel 361: 15–29.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hansen, Anita. 2000. Le e caduc interconsonantique en tant que variable sociolinguistique: Une étude en région parisienne. LINX 421: 45–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. A study of young Parisian speech: Some trends in pronunciation. In Phonological Variation in French: Illustrations from Three Continents, Randall Gess, Chantal Lyche & Trudel Meisenburg (eds), 151–172. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hayes, Joseph J. 1981. Gayspeak. In Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication, James W. Chesebro (ed), 45–57. New York: Pilgrim.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Higgins, Ross. 2004. French, English and the idea of gay language in Montreal. In Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language, William Leap & Tom Boellstorff (eds), 72–104. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kulick, Don. 2000. Gay and lesbian language. Annual Review of Anthropology 291: 243–285. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ince, Kate. 2002. Queering the family? Fantasy and the performance of sexuality and gay relations in French cinema 1995–2000. SFC 2(2): 90–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Léon, Pierre. 1993. Précis de Phonostylistique: Parole et Expressivité. Paris: Nathan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levon, Erez. 2006. Hearing “gay”: Prosody, interpretation, and the affective judgments of men’s apeech. American Speech 81(1): 56–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linville, Sue Ellen. 1998. Acoustic correlates of perceived versus actual sexual orientation in men’s speech. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica 501: 35–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mack, Sara. 2010. A sociophonetic analysis of perception of sexual orientation in Puerto Rican Spanish. Laboratory Phonology 1(1): 41–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mack, Sara & Munson, Benjamin. 2012. The influence of /s/ quality on ratings of men’s sexual orientation: Explicit and implicit measures of the ‘gay lisp’ stereotype. Journal of Phonetics 401: 198–212. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mallet, Géraldine. 2008. La Liaison en Français: Description et Analyses dans le Corpus PFC. PhD dissertation, Paris Ouest-Nanterre La Défense.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 2011. Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Language Practice and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morin, Yves C. 1986. La loi de position ou de l’explication en phonologie historique. Linguistique Théorique 15(2): 199–231.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin & Babel, Molly. 2007. Loose lips and silver tongues, or, projecting sexual orientation through speech. Languages and Linguistics Compass 1(5): 416–449. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin, Jefferson, Sarah V. & McDonald, Elizabeth C. 2006. The influence of perceived sexual orientation on fricative identification. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119(4): 2427–2437. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin, McDonald, Elizabeth C., DeBoe, Nancy L. & White, Aubrey R. 2006. The acoustic and perceptual bases of judgments of women and men’s sexual orientation from read speech. Journal of Phonetics 341: 202–240. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paveau, Marie-Anne. 2008. Les non-linguistes font-ils de la linguistique ? Une approche anti-éliminativiste des théories folk. Pratiques 139–140: 93–109.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pettigrew, Thomas F. 1979. The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 51: 461–476. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai, Maegaard, Marie, Spindler Møller, Janus & Kristiansen, Tore. 2014. Indexical meanings of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts. Language in Society 431: 1–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B., Bent, Tessa, Munson, Benjamin, Bradlow, Ann R. & Bailey, J. Michael. 2004. The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116(4): 1905–1908. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J. 2011a. The California vowel shift and gay identity. American Speech 86(1): 32–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011b. Salience and the social meaning of declarative contours: Three case studies of gay professionals. Journal of English Linguistics 391: 233–264. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J. & van Hofwege, Janneke. 2014. How conservatism and normative gender constrain variation in inland California: The case of /s/. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 20(2): 128–137.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Provencher, Denis M. 2010. ‘I dislike politicians and homosexuals’: Language and homophobia in contemporary France. Gender and Language 4(2): 287–321.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. Coming out à l’oriental: Maghrebi-French performances of gender, sexuality, and religion. Journal of Homosexuality 581: 812–833. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Russell Webb, Eric. 2002. The Relational /R/: Three Case Studies of Rhotic Integrity and Variation. PhD dissertation, University of Texas.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. Investigating “self-conscious” speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English. Language in Society 271: 53–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sisson, Carol. 2003. Phonetic Cues in the Evaluation of Gay Male Speech in Canadian English and Québec French. Unpublished manuscript.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
Tranel, Bernard. 1987. The Sounds of French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Borsel, John, de Bruyn, Els, Lefebvre, Evelien, Sokoloff, Anouschka, de Ley, Sophia & Baudonck, Nele. 2009. The prevalence of lisping in gay men. Journal of Communication Disorders 421: 100–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walker, Doug C. 2001. French Sound Structure. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walter, Henriette. 1990. Une voyelle qui ne veut pas mourir. In Variation and Change in French: Essays Presented to Rebecca Posner on the Occasion of Her Sixtieth Birthday, John N. Green & Wendy Ayres-Bennett (eds), 27–36. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1997. Two lavender issues for linguists. In Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, Anna Livia and Kira Hall (eds), 21–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Calder, J.
2024. ‘Harsh’ SoMa vs ‘Beige’ Castro: The cross-modal construction of contrasting femininities in queer San Francisco. Language & Communication 99 ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo
Geng, Puyang & Wentao Gu
2022. Acoustic and Perceptual Characteristics of Mandarin Speech in Gay and Heterosexual Male Speakers. Language and Speech 65:4 ► pp. 1096 ff. DOI logo
Boyd, Zac, Josef Fruehwald & Lauren Hall-Lew
2021. Crosslinguistic perceptions of /s/ among English, French, and German listeners. Language Variation and Change 33:2 ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
Daniele, Maddalena, Fabio Fasoli, Raquel Antonio, Simone Sulpizio & Anne Maass
2020. Gay Voice: Stable Marker of Sexual Orientation or Flexible Communication Device?. Archives of Sexual Behavior 49:7 ► pp. 2585 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue