In Search of Gay Language

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In Search of Gay Language

• Jeffrey T. Runner
• Department of Linguistics
• University of Rochester

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Varieties of Language

• The varieties of language used in different
  places may be quite different
• English, Hindi
• Or more similar
• Spanish, Italian
• Or even the same language
• US English, British English, Australian English

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Varieties of Same Language

• Variation may be found in any area of grammar
• Semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, etc.
• Vocabulary
• truck/lorry
• elevator/lift
• bathroom/loo
• Pronunciation
• US butter b????
• Cockney butter b???

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Variables that Affect Variation

• Geography
• US/England (see above)
• Different locations within US
• Vocabulary
• soda/pop/tonic/coke
• pail/bucket
• Pronunciation
• Northeast coffee k?fi
• West Coast coffee kafi

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Variables that Affect Variation

• Socioeconomic factors
• Labov (1972)
• fourth floor study (Saks, Macys, S. Klein)
• Roughly correlation between degree of r-lessness
  and socioeconomic group in NYC
• Ethnicity
• African-American English
• Chicano English
• Indian English

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Variables that Affect Variation

• Geography, socioeconomics, ethnicity
• Proximity explanation
• People who live together
• People who work together
• People who form a kind of community

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Also affecting variation gender

• Gender
• Labov (1972)
• Gender was also relevant to r-lessness
• Womens degree of r-lessness matched that of the
  men in next highest socioeconomic group
• This pattern has been found over and over (Coates
  1986)
• Somewhat different situation
• Proximity explanation doesnt quite make sense
• Women and men live together, work together
• Community?

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Also affecting variation gender

• Does this mean there is a distinct variety of
  English spoken by women?
• Womens English?
• Lakoff (1972) suggests this is true
• Focuses on vocabulary, syntactic constructions
  and intonation
• Claims women have access to both womens
  language and neutral language (spoken by both
  men and women)

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Lakoffs Womens Language

• From Lakoff (1972)
• Vocabulary for fine color distinctions
• mauve, beige, ecru, lavendar
• Use of meaningless particles
• oh dear, oh fudge
• Use of certain adjectives
• adorable, charming, sweet, lovely, divine
• Use of tag questions
• John is here, isnt he?
• Rising intonation for declarative sentences
• Q When will dinner be ready? A Oh, around 6?
• Greater variability in intonational contour

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Lakoffs Womens Language

• Some important points
• Lakoffs work was impressionistic
• Later work has suggested that power, not gender,
  is the variable more relevant for linguistic
  features Lakoff identifies (OBarr Atkins 1980)
• Another point/observation/hypothesis of Lakoffs
• If a man uses these features he may be perceived
  as homosexual
• This hypothesis has triggered research on
  language and sexuality (see Gaudio 1994, below)

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Sexuality as a Variable

• Does sexuality affect language variation?
• Like gender, the proximity idea doesnt quite
  work
• Though gay and lesbian people do form
  communities, they also often live and/or work
  with heterosexual people
• In most cases were raised in primarily or even
  exclusively heterosexual environments
• The question then is there gay language?

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Gay Language?

• A couple of points
• Lots of different vocab homosexual, gay,
  lesbian, bisexual, GLB, queer, same-sex
  attraction, etc.
• Im a product of the 80s and will use gay to
  refer to gay men, lesbian to refer to lesbian
  women, bisexual to refer to bisexual men or
  women, and GLB as a convenient cover term for all
  three groups
• I personally like the term queer but recognize
  that it has different meanings to different
  people--often being coextensive with GLB, but for
  many including transsexual/transgendered people,
  and for some including heterosexuals who pursue
  non-mainstream sexual practices, such as SM

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Gay Language?

• A couple of points (contd)
• Most work on language and sexuality focuses on
  minority sexualities (e.g., GLB, etc.) and not
  language associated with heterosexual behavior
  (Cameron Kulick 2003 is an exception)
• Most work on language and sexuality focuses on
  gay men. There has been relatively little work
  on lesbians (but see Moonwomon-Baird 1997) and on
  bisexuals (but see Murphy 1997)

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Gay Language?

• This question has been investigated from several
  angles
• Vocabulary
• Completely different terms/phrases
• Particular senses for familiar words (especially
  sexual vocabulary)
• Pronunciation

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Gay Language?

• Stanley (1970) Homosexual Slang
• Surveys filled out by 67 homosexuals and 10
  heterosexuals
• Basic results
• Core vocabulary known to most homosexuals, but
  also to many heterosexuals
• fringe vocabulary known only to subset
• There was a metropolitan vs rural difference
• And a gender differencemen and women knew
  different vocabulary

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Stanley (1970)

• Examples from glossary
• Bluff (butchfluff) female homosexual who
  assumes either the active or passive role in a
  sexual relation
• Chichi shishi homosexual
• Drop beads accidentally reveal ones
  homosexuality through a slip of the tongue or
  other indiscretion
• Dyke, dike lesbian in male use any lesbian, in
  lesbian use an especially obvious one
• Fluff passive partner in a lesbian relationship
• Fruit fly woman who seeks the company of male
  homosexuals, usually for sexual reasons
• Kiki (1) bisexual (2) ambivalent in the active
  or passive roles of a homosexual relationship
• Lucy Law police
• Wreck (1) shock heterosexuals by purposely
  acting in an outrageous manner (2) degrade
  another homosexual when he does not expect it

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Stanley (1970)

• Conclusion drawn
• No single homosexual language
• First men and women knew and used different
  vocabulary
• Second the only vocab that everybody knew were
  also familiar to many of the heterosexual
  participants
• However
• Evidence that subcommunities may have their own
  language varieties

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Having sex

• Sanders Reinisch (1999)
• 600 IU undergrads surveyed (orientation not
  asked)
• Would you say you had sex if the most intimate
  behavior you engaged in was
• 11 interactive sexual activities listed
• Results
• 60 of respondents did not consider oral-genital
  contact as having sex
• 20 did not consider even penile-anal intercourse
  as having sex

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Having sex

• Data presented by Ward (2003)
• 779 males (84 homosexual, 16 bisexual)
• 757 females (57 homosexual, 43 bisexual)
• Similar question
• Would you say you had sex with someone of the
  same sex if the most intimate behavior you
  engaged in was
• Results
• About 90 of women and 80 of men did consider
  oral-genital contact having sex (compare to 40
  in mixed survey)
• About 95 of men also considered penile-anal
  intercourse as having sex (compare to 80 in
  mixed survey)

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Having sex

• The point
• The same term has very different meanings to
  people of different sexual orientations
• Interpretation of these terms is influenced by
  sexuality
• Interestingly, GLB men and women more similar to
  each other than to mixed group

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Pronunciation

• Recall Lakoffs hypothesis
• If a man uses these features of womens
  language he may be perceived as homosexual
• One of Lakoffs suggestions was that women have
  greater variability in intonational contour
• Is greater variability in intonational contour a
  feature of gay language?

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Pronunciation

• Moonwomon-Baird (1997)
• Analyzed pitch range and variation of recorded
  speech of two pairs of women (one heterosexual,
  one lesbian)
• Results
• Heterosexual women made more use of pitch range
  than did the lesbians
• Problems (see Jacobs 1996)
• No explanation for how pitch range and variation
  were measured
• No discussion of topics discussed by women
• Hard to evaluate

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Pronunciation

• Gaudio (1994)
• Four gay men and four straight men are recorded
  reading the same two passages (one non-fiction
  and one dramatic)
• 13 participants listened to recordings and rated
  voices (1) straight/gay, (2) effeminite/masculine
  , (3) reserved/emotional, (4) affected/ordinary
• Results
• Listeners distinguished heterosexual and
  homosexual speakers with 100 accuracy
• Various possible correlations between pitch range
  and orientations tested but only one was even
  suggestive (not statistically significant)
  those whose orientation was evaluated as gay did
  make more use of pitch range, but only for the
  nonfiction text

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Pronunciation

• Gaudios hypothesis was inspired by Lakoffs
  conjecture
• Pitch range of gay men should be greater, more
  like that of women
• Particularly interesting that participants
  perceptions of the orientations of the speakers
  were crystal clear
• But what Gaudio measured was obviously not what
  the listeners were sensitive to

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Pronunciation

• A series of articles by Smyth, Jacobs and Rogers
  further explores the relationship between
  perception and phonetic characteristics of gay
  and straight men
• 25 men (17 gay, 8 straight)
• Recorded reading two passages (one scientific,
  one dramatic) and responded to open-ended
  question
• 2 groups of listeners
• 14 all gay, 32 mixed (male/female)
• Responded sounds gay or sounds straight plus
  confidence
• Top 20 sounds gay voices and top 20 sounds
  straight voices submitted to phonetic analyses
• Goal was to identify phonetic characteristics
  that listeners perceive as gay or straight

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Pronunciation

• Results
• Perception
• Top 20 sounds straight included two gay voices
  and three straight voices
• Top 20 sounds gay included 6 gay voices
• gaydar analysis
• One speaker (only) received a .41 sounds gay
  rating from the mixed group, but a .86 rating
  from the gay listeners
• Was there some characteristic of his voice that
  the gay listeners picked up on that the mixed
  group did not?

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Pronunciation

• Results (contd)
• Sybillants (s/z) measurements
• s/z significantly longer in top 20 of
  sounds gay voices
• No difference in vowel length between two groups
• Discussion
• There are measurable differences between the
  voices of those men judged as sounding gay and
  those judged as sounding straight
• As noted above, though, there are actually gay
  men in the sounds straight category
• Difference cannot be attributed to gay language
  since some of the gay men lack difference
• This is really an analysis of what a mixed group
  of people (with possibly little or no actual
  exposure to real gay people) thinks a gay man
  sounds like

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Essentialist Assumptions

• Most of this work has come from an essentialist
  perspective that sexuality is an inherent part of
  a persons identity
• This perspective predicts that if someone can be
  defined as have same sex attraction, sets of
  other characteristics (such as language) should
  also be associated with them

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Essentialist Assumptions

• This view was certainly the working hypothesis
  through the 80s and early 90s
• More recent work on gender and in queer theory
  calls this assumption into question
• Its not the case that there should be any
  expectation of shared characteristics among
  different people who happen to share same-sex
  attraction

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Indexing

• Rather than claim that there is gay language,
  per se, another view is that speakers use
  language to index their identity or social
  status
• Language can be used to index geography,
  socioeconomic class, ethnicity, gendersexuality
  (Cameron Kulick 2003)
• An important point though we may talk about
  indexing as an active/conscious thing, it is much
  more likely to be unconscious

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Indexing

• Lakoffs conjecture can be restated as
• gay men may use features of language usually
  used to index female gender
• Another question to ask, though, is the
  following
• Do gay men (and lesbians?) use language to index
  the opposite gender (Lakoffs conjecture) or do
  they use language to index homosexuality/bisexuali
  ty directly?

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Indexing

• The Gaudio research finds very little evidence
  that gay men use language to index female gender,
  though listeners perceive some sort of indexing
• The Smyth, Jacobs and Rogers study does not ask
  this question, since it divides up the speakers
  into those perceived as gay sounding and those
  perceived as straight sounding, without asking
  how actual gay men use language to index
  themselves

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Indexing

• Needed research
• A study that can identify some characteristic of
  language that can be measured among four groups
  gay and straight men and lesbian and straight
  women
• If Lakoff is right the gay men and straight women
  should pattern together and (perhaps) the
  lesbians and straight men should pattern together
• If gay men and lesbians use language to index gay
  and lesbian sexuality directly then we might
  expect four different patterns
• One for gay men, one for straight men, one for
  lesbians and one for straight women

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Indexing

• Current senior thesis project by Becky Altmann
  (linguistics major)
• 15 people read and record a passage
• 5 gay men, 5 straight men, 5 straight women
• Analyze phonetic characteristics of speech to
  test which patterns are found
• Current results (in progressonly men have been
  recorded and analyzed)
• s/z of gay men have lower center of gravity
  than that of straight men (p
• Center of gravity is a measurement that reflects
  how much space is between the teeth and tongue
  during a sybillant like s or z
• Variation in center of gravity of sybillants has
  also been claimed to be perceptible
• Languages vary on center of gravity in
  sybillants, so this is a reasonable factor to
  measure for language variation
• Still to do record and measure women (work in
  progress)

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Conclusions

• Is there gay language?
• It doesnt look like it
• Are there characteristics of language that gay
  men and lesbians may use (unconsciously or not)
  to index sexuality (either directly or
  indirectly)?
• Maybe
• Vocabulary, possibly
• Pronuncation, possibly
• Take-home message
• Research in this area is on-going
• An understanding of how sexuality is represented
  in language will help us understand how other
  features are represented in language
• proximity idea is probably too simple-minded
• The ways people form communities and index
  their membership can be complex
• Probably true for sexuality and gender, and also
  for other factors

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References

• Cameron, Deborah and Don Kulick (2003) Language
  and Sexuality. Cambridge Cambridge University
  Press.
• Coates, Jennifer (1986) Women, Men and Language.
  London Longman.
• Gaudio, Rudolph (1994) Sounding Gay Pitch
  Properties in the Speech of Gay and Straight
  Men. American Speech 69 30-57.
• Labov, William (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns.
  Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Lakoff, Robin (1972) Language and Womans Place.
  New York Harper Row.
• Moonwomon-Baird, Birch (1997) Toward a Study of
  Lesbian Speech. In Anna Livia and Kira Hall
  (eds.) Queerly Phrased Language, Gender and
  Sexuality. New York Oxford University Press.
• Murphy, Lynn (1997) The Elusive Bisexual. In
  Anna Livia and Kira Hall (eds.) Queerly Phrased
  Language, Gender and Sexuality. New York Oxford
  University Press.
• OBarr, William and Bowman Atkins (1980)
  Womens Language or Powerless Language? In
  Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Border and Nelly
  Furman (eds.) Women and Language in Literature
  and Society. New York Praeger.
• Stanley, Julia P. (1970) Homosexual Slang.
  American Speech 4545-59.