Pitch range and women's sexual orientation

Abstract

The interaction between intonational patterns and speaker gender has long been noted in the language and gender literature (e.g., Brend 1972, Lakoff 1975, McConnell-Ginet 1983, Ohara 1992). It has also been hypothesized (Moonwomon 1985, Queen 1997) that intonation may be a locus of difference between lesbian and heterosexual women's speech. This paper investigates the question of whether there is an interaction between pitch range and sexual orientation in women. An experiment was carried out in San Francisco in which 24 lesbians and straight women were individually audiotaped recounting the plot of the movie The Wizard of Oz. Data are thus controlled as much as possible for content and communicative situation, while remaining as natural speech. Acoustic analysis of the recordings suggests that pitch range is not a distinguishing factor for female sexual orientation.