The perception of sexual orientation through speech: Generational change

Abstract

Previous research has shown that listeners can perceive the sexual orientation of some lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people at a greater than chance levels based on the acoustic-perceptual characteristics of their speech (Munson et al., J. Phonetics [2006], Pierrehumbert et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. [2004]). The cues to these judgments were the pronunciation of specific sounds (i.e., /æ/, /ɛ/, /oʊ/, /u/, /s/), rather than global speech characteristics (like f0 range or formant-frequency scaling). In the years since those studies were conducted, societal attitudes toward LGB people have changed substantially. Moreover, ongoing sound changes have affected the pronunciation of many of the sounds that cued judgments of sexual orientation from speech. The current study examines whether these changes affect the perception of sexual orientation through speech. The perception experiments described in Munson et al. are being redone using two groups of listeners. One group is matched in age to subjects whose data were reported previously (i.e, currently 18-30 years old). The second group that is matched in birth year to the subjects from the earlier study (i.e., currently 33-45 years old). Ongoing analyses compare these new data are compared to those from Munson et al.