Fact and fiction in the description of female and male pitch

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Female speech has been characterized as high pitched, shrill, overemotional, and swoopy. Pitch is, of course, a relative scale, so it would be equally valid to describe male pitch as low pitched, rumbling, underexpressive, and montonous. But if “swoopiness” is inherent in female speech, it must be asked whether the effect is one of a comparatively wider range, of greater dynamicity, or of a simple arithmetical misinterpretation. It may be the case that previous accounts have been based on absolute (linear) and, therefore, misleading values in Hertz; whereas the use of the semitonal, and thus perceptually more appropriate, scale, indicates that female speech should not be so marked on acoustic bases alone. Reexamination of pitch ranges and dynamicity values reported by others leads to the rejection of some of the elements of the stereotype. New data assembled from five males and five females also indicate that, auditorily, female speech contains similar ratios of pitch range in relation to long-term average pitch, as does male speech. Monotonicity and reduced pitch range, as important ingredients in enhancing stereotypical masculine speech (Terrango, 1974; Bennett and Weinberg, 1974), are reexamined.