Document Type
Honors Project
Abstract
This study aimed to examine a potential linguistic cue that signals a speaker's sexual orientation. I examined the relationship between vowel duration and perceived sexual orientation for male speakers of American English. Speakers recorded a passage that was heard by naive listeners and ranked according to perceived sexual orientation. There was no significant difference in vowel duration between men perceived to sound gay and men perceived to sound straight. However, the gay-sounding men produced their diphthongs with more variance in duration than did the straight-sounding men.
Recommended Citation
Panfili, Laura, "Vowel Duration and Perceptions of the Gay Accent" (2011). Linguistics Honors Projects. 7.
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/ling_honors/7
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