Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Sexuality
Vol. 13:1 (2024) ► pp.24–50

Bisexuality in experimental sociophonetics

Ideologies and implications

| University of CaliforniaSanta BarbaraCA, USA
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 2007, Gaudio 1994, Levon 2006, Moonwomon-Baird 1997, Munson, McDonald, DeBoe & White 2006a, Munson, Jefferson & McDonald 2006b, Pierrehumbert, Bent, Munson, Bradlow & Bailey 2004, Smyth, Jacobs & Rogers 2003, Zimman 2013). 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.
Keywords: bisexuality, sociophonetics, ideology, gender normativity, experimental paradigms, regression modeling
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
Published online: 30 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.00030.wil
References (57)
References
Alarie, Milaine & Gaudet, Stéphanie. 2013. “I don’t know if she is bisexual or if she just wants to get attention”: Analyzing the various mechanisms through which emerging adults invisibilize bisexuality. Journal of Bisexuality 13(2): 191–214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Audacity Team. 2019. Audacity(R): Free Audio Editor and Recorder, Version 2.3.2 [Computer program].Google Scholar
Barron-Lutzross, Auburn. 2015. The production and perception of a lesbian speech style. <[URL]> (November 19, 2023)
Boersma, Paul. 2011. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program].Google Scholar
Brewster, Melanie E. & Moradi, Bonnie. 2010. Personal, relational, and community aspects of bisexual identity in emerging, early and middle adult cohorts. Journal of Bisexuality 10(4): 404–428. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary & Hall, Kira. 2004. Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society 331: 468–515. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calder, Jeremy. 2019. From Sissy to Sickening: The indexical landscape of /s/ in SoMa, San Francisco. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(3): 332–358. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. Whose indexical field is it? The role of community epistemology in indexing social meaning. Texas Linguistics Society 391: 39–55.Google Scholar
Calder, Jeremy & King, Sharese. 2020. Intersections between race, place, and gender in the production of /s/. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 26(2): Article 5.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2007. Accent, (ING), and the social logic of listener perceptions. American Speech 82(1): 32–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Intersecting variables and perceived sexual orientation in men. American Speech 86(1): 52–68. DOI logoGoogle 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
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4): 453–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eisner, Shiri. 2016. Monosexism. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies, Abbie E. Goldberg (ed), 793–796. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Fairbanks, Grant. 1960. Voice and Articulation Drillbook. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Forrest, Karen, Weismer, Gary, Milenkovis, Paul & Dougall, Ronald N. 1988. Statistical analysis of word-initial voiceless obstruents: Preliminary data. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 84(1): 115–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Susanne & Toda, Martine. 2010. Do differences in male versus female /s/ reflect biological or sociophonetic factors? In Turbulent Sounds: An Interdisciplinary Guide, Susanne Fuchs, Martine Toda & Marzena Žygis (eds), 281–302. New York: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gaudio, Rudolf P. 1994. Sounding gay: Pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men. American Speech 69(1): 30–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Julie E. 2013. Creating a bisexual display: Making bisexuality visible. Journal of Bisexuality 13(1): 39–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hazenberg, Evan. 2016. Walking the straight and narrow: Linguistic choice and gendered presentation. Gender and Language 10(2): 270–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hertlein, Katherine M., Hartwell, Erica E. & Munns, Mashara E. 2016. Attitudes toward bisexuality according to sexual orientation and gender. Journal of Bisexuality 16(3): 339–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Indiana University, Kinsey Institute. n.d. The Kinsey Scale. <[URL]> (September 16, 2021)
Jacobs, Greg, Smyth, Ron & Rogers, Henry. 2000. Language and sexuality: Searching for the phonetic correlates of gay- and straight-sounding male voices. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 181: 46–61.Google Scholar
Jongman, Allard, Wayland, Ratree & Wong, Serena. 2000. Acoustic characteristics of English fricatives. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 108(3): 1252–1263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Sangseok & Lee, Dong Kyu. 2018. What is the proper way to apply the multiple comparison test? Korean Journal of Anesthesiology 71(5): 353–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez. 2006. Hearing “gay”: Prosody, interpretation, and the affective judgements of men’s speech. American Speech 8(1): 56–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Sexuality in context: Variation and the sociolinguistic perception of identity. Language in Society 36(4): 533–544. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Teasing apart to bring together: Gender and sexuality in variations research. American Speech 86(1): 69–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LGBTQIA+ Glossary. n.d. <[URL]> (February 5, 2021).
Linville, Sue Ellen. 1998. Acoustic correlates of perceived versus actual sexual orientation in men’s speech. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica 50(1): 35–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mendoza, Dozandri C. under review. That /s/ tiene tumbao: Chonga-fied sibilants and the disidentificatory sociophonetics of Latinx drag. Gender and Language.
miles-hercules, deandre. 2018. The real tea: Language at the intersections. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, Rusty Barrett & Kira Hall (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press.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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munson, Benjamin. 2007. The acoustic correlates of perceived masculinity, perceived femininity, and perceived sexual orientation. Language and Speech 50(1): 125–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munson, Benjamin & Babel, Molly. 2007. Loose lips and silver tongues, or, projecting sexual orientation through speech. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(5): 416–449. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai, Maegaard, Marie, Spindler Møller, Janus & Kristiansen, Tore. 2014. Indexical meaning of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts. Language in Society 431: 1–31. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Podesva, Robert & Van Hofwegen, 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): 129–137.Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2019. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Rendall, Drew, Vasey, Paul L. & McKenzie, Jared. 2008. The Queen’s English: An alternative, biosocial hypothesis for the distinctive features of “gay speech”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 37(1): 188–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rogers, Henry & Smyth, Ron. 2003. Phonetic differences between gay- and straight-sounding male speakers of North American English. (Paper presented at the 15th International Phonetic Association Conference, Barcelona, Spain)
Rogers, Henry, Smyth, Ron & Jacobs, Greg. 2000. Vowel and sibilant duration in gay- and straight-sounding male speech. (Paper presented at the First International Gender and Language Association Conference, Stanford, California)
Rothauser, Ernst H. 1969. IEEE recommended practice for speech quality measurements. IEEE Transactions on Audio and Electroacoustics 171: 225–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shadle, Christine H. 1990. Articulatory-acoustic relationships in fricative consonants. In Speech Production and Speech Modeling, William J. Hardcastle & Alain Marchal (eds), 187–209. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991. The effect of geometry on source mechanisms of fricative consonants. Journal of Phonetics 19(3–4): 409–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, Michael. 1995. A case of distant assimilation: /str/ → /ʃtr/. American Speech 70(1): 101–107. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. 2011. Sociophonetics: An Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Borsel, John, Vandaela, Jana & Corthals, Paul. 2013. Pitch and pitch variation in lesbian women. Journal of Voice 27(5): 656–713. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waksler, Rachelle. 2001. Pitch range and women’s sexual orientation. Word 52(1): 69–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Willis, Chloe & Ben Youssef, Chadi. 2023. Random bisexual forests: Intersections between gender, sexuality, and race in /s/ production. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8 (1): 5504. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zimman, Lal. 2010. Female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: A pilot study. Colorado Research in Linguistics 22(1): 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Variability in /s/ among transgender speakers: Evidence for a socially grounded account of gender and sibilants. Linguistics 55(5): 993–1019. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. Duration & moments for /s/ [Praat script].Google Scholar