Exploring the "gay accent" features of the speech of gay men in Wellington

Abstract

This thesis reports on a preliminary investigation of some of the phonetic characteristics of gay men's speech in Wellington, New Zealand. Interviews were conducted with 20 gay men and 10 straight men. Two parameters of social variation were studied. Direct comparisons were made between the mean scores of the two groups on each linguistic variable, in order to determine whether or not gay men talk differently from straight men. In addition, each man was given a score representing his degree of integration into Wellington's gay community. For the gay men the correlation between this score and use of each variable was measured, in order to test whether high scoring gay men used "gay sounding" variants more than low scoring gay men. Integration into the gay community was measured on the Gay Community Integration Index, a scale which I devised. A substantial portion of the thesis is devoted to the development of a theoretical understanding of gay male behaviour and language use, and it is this theory that informed my choice of community integration as a potentially interesting sociolinguistic variable. Three linguistic variables were studied: raising of the spectral peak of /s/; realisation of /t/ as a fricative or affricate rather than as an aspirated stop; and comparatively dynamic modulation of voice pitch over time as reflected in measures of average pitch and pitch range. The results reported in this thesis suggest highly significant differences between gay men and straight men in pronunciation of /s/, and no differences at all in measures of voice pitch. It also appears that there are gay/straight differences in pronunciation of /t/, but the patterns are complex and the exact role of (t) as an indicator or marker of gay identity is somewhat obscure. Furthermore different degrees of integration into Wellington's gay community do not seem to predict different usage of "gay-sounding" variants in general.