Judgments of self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers of American English: Certain phonemes are more salient than others in determining sexual orientation

Abstract

Prior research (Munson, McDonald, DeBoe, & White, 2006; Tracy, Bainter, & Satariano, 2015) has demonstrated that, upon hearing a relatively short utterance, listeners were able to differentiate between self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers of American English. Furthermore, Tracy et al. (2015) discovered that listeners primarily relied on certain vowels (e.g., /ae/, /eɪ/, /e/, /iː/, /oʊ/, /ɑ/, and /uː/) and consonants (e.g., /l/, /n/, and /s/) to determine a speaker’s sexual orientation. The present study, based on data collected by Tracy (2015), investigated whether listeners relied on other phonemes when forming their sexual orientation judgments. Listeners were presented with utterances that either included one, two, or three consonants, or one, two, or three vowels. Upon hearing a single phone, such as /ɪ/, /^/, /ɹ/, /θ/, and /j/, listeners were able to differentiate between the speakers. With respect to the consonants, listeners’ performance improved as the number of certain consonants (e.g., /l/, /n/, /ɹ/, /θ/, and /j/) in the utterance increased. For example, the utterance /ɹ, j, θ/ resulted in better performance than the utterance /f, m, v/. The results indicate that certain phonemes, more than others, can indicate a speaker’s sexual orientation.