The impact of sexual orientation on the pronunciation of stressed vowels in Peninsular Spanish: an acoustic analysis

Authors

  • Angel Osle Ezquerra International School of London Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i1.18395

Keywords:

sexual orientation, phonetic variation, sociophonetics, Spanish vowels

Abstract

This study explores the possible correlation between sexual orientation and the pronunciation of stressed vowels in Peninsular Spanish through a perception and production tasks. A group of thirty native Spanish speakers (fifteen identified themselves as gay and fifteen as straight) recorded the stimuli that served to elicit the Spanish vowels in stressed position. A group of ten Spanish speakers acted as evaluators and rated the speech samples previously recorded in terms of perceived sexual orientation of the different talkers using a five-point Likert scale. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, no significant differences were found between straight and gay speakers in terms of the F1 and F2 values for the stressed vowels elicited in our production task. Second, no significant correlation was found between the two acoustic features under study and the judgments of perceived sexual orientation made by our group of evaluators. Third, our group of evaluators identified our speakers’ sexual orientation with a high degree success. Based on our results, we can hypothesize that additional acoustic cues-not analyzed in this study- may play an important role in the understanding and processing of gay speech.

Author Biography

  • Angel Osle Ezquerra, International School of London
    Angel Osle Ezquerra (PhD, Queen Mary, University of London) is a Lecturer in Spanish at the International School of London. His research interests centre on sociophonetic variation in Peninsular Spanish, L2 phonological acquisition and foreign-accented speech.

Published

2015-06-11

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Osle Ezquerra, A. (2015). The impact of sexual orientation on the pronunciation of stressed vowels in Peninsular Spanish: an acoustic analysis. Sociolinguistic Studies, 9(1), 137-150. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i1.18395

Most read articles by the same author(s)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >>