Anna Kirstine Jørgensen, sbm600 03/06/13 Bacheloropgave i lingvistik, F13 side 1 af 25 AKUSTISK ANALYSE AF VOKAL- OG /S/-KVALITET HOS UNGE DANSKE MÆND En undersøgelse af forholdet mellem seksualitet og artikulation ANNA KIRSTINE JØRGENSEN ABSTRACT It is a widely known stereotype that gay men talk with what is often described as a ‘lisp’. Previ- ous research has shown that listeners are able to significantly detect sexual orientation of speak- ers based on specific phonetic variation in audio-only data (Gaudio, 1994; Linville, 1998; Mun- son, 2007). Studies suggest that these judgments are dependent on different features concerning the articulation of /s/ and the formant frequencies of vowels. Studies on fricatives find that measures of Centre of Gravity and spread help determine the lo- cation and shape of the fricative constriction and thereby the precise place of articulation of /s/ (Tabain, 2001; Jongman et al., 2000). Studies on vowel space dispersion find that gay male speakers have significantly more-expanded vowel spaces than heterosexual speakers (Pierrehumbert et al., 2004; Smyth & Rogers, 2002). The aim of this study on 20 male native speakers of Danish, 10 gay and 10 straight, is to shed light on the relationship, if any, between sexuality and the presented acoustic measures. Results showed that the gay men produced /s/-tokens with significantly higher frequencies for Centre of Gravity and significantly lower spread values than the heterosexual men, indicating a more fronted articulation of /s/. For vowel space dispersion no general significant effect of sexual orientation was found, but the F1-frequencies of the low front vowel /a/ were significantly higher for the group of gay speak- ers, which was also found to significantly affect speaker judgments of sexual orientation in Mun- son (2005). No correlation between measures of /s/ and vowel space dispersion was found for the groups of homosexual and heterosexual men.