Intonation and the Construction of Gay Identities

Running head: INTONATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF GAY IDENTITIES 1

Intonational Salience and the Construction of Gay Identities

Ron Warren

California State University, Fresno

INTONATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF GAY IDENTITIES 2

Abstract

This study is an examination of the intonation patterns

of English speaking gay men. Previous research has shown

that the perceived broad intonation ranges used by gay men

can be used to index the identities they wish to present. I

examine the intonational salience strategies of an openly

gay man with a very bold, party-boy persona. I argue that

this speaker uses the two major types of phonetic salience-

acoustic and categorial- to communicate his identities to

others. His demographic identity as a gay man is subject to

a greater degree of intonational variation than unrelated

speech, while talk that pertains to his specific,

outrageous, fun-loving gay identity is yet further marked

than speech which pertains to his identity as a gay man in

general. My findings support the view of some linguistic

variables serving active social functions rather than being

simple descriptive features of a particular sociolect.


Intonational Salience and the Construction of Gay Identities

Much recent sociolinguistic research is particularly

concerned with how speakers employ linguistic variables to index

identity (Eckert 2000 & 2005; Moore 2003), rather than the more

traditional demographic focus of variation studies. It is not

enough to describe these identity-based variables purely in terms

of regional origins, for example, but rather as socially

meaningful representations of a speakers attitudes and

affiliations.

While many studies of variation have focused on the

segmental level, speech communities are by no means constrained

to segmental variation, recent studies have explored the way

intonation can be used to distinguish one group from another

(e.g. Grabe, 2002; Queen, 2001). Further, investigations of pitch

as an index of sexual orientation have consistently found an

association between pitch values and judgement of a male

speaker’s sexuality, specifically associating broad pitch values

with gay speakers (Gaudio, 1994; Smyth, Jacobs, and Rogers,

2003).


In the study of gay intonation by Podesva (2011), he shows

that gay men employ pitch to make utterances stand out when they

are particularly important to projecting specific identities. By

using intonational strategies to make some statements more

salient, he argues, his speakers were able to make socially

meaningful statements about themselves.

Intonation is particularly well suited to acting as a

salience strategy due to the lack of one-to-one correspondences

between intonational forms and pragmatic meanings (Hirschberg,

2002). This means that phonetic variables of intonation- both

prosodic contours and acoustically extreme pitch values- are

available to index a multiplicity of identities because of their

ability to make an utterance more salient without carrying a

particular pragmatic meaning in the language itself.

The phonetic salience of a variable may be either categorial

or acoustic. Categorial salience reflects the relative rarity of

a variable, as an uncommon variable will be more noticeable when

produced. For any given speaker, high frequency variables are

poor transmitters of marked social meanings simply on the basis

of their frequency. For example, a falling contour is the most


common variation in the case of declarative statements, and

therefore a falling contour declarative would be unsuitable to

mark an utterance as salient. However, a falling contour

declarative need not always be a non-salient variable. The use of

acoustic salience- the presence of an extreme acoustic value-

allows the template of a high frequency variable to be

exaggerated acoustically into salience.

Podesva found that gay speakers employ both types of salient

intonation to index identity beyond the simply demographic. He

found that his speakers employ intonation variables differently

in different social situations, which reflects the identity each

speaker desires to project at any given time.

The current study builds upon Podesva (2012), with the aim

of investigating the use of intonational salience strategies by

gay men in indexing levels of identity within a single social

context. For the purpose of this study, I propose that identities

occupy a continuum of general to specific. For a gay speaker, the

continuum might progress from a general demographic gay identity-

that is, simple identification as a gay man- to more specific gay


identities- such as Podesva’s labeling of his speakers as

cultivating ‘flamboyant diva’ or ‘life of the party’ identities.

I address the following research questions: Do gay speakers

use intonation to make statements related to the demographic gay

identity stand out from more general statements? If so, will

these speakers make statements related to more specific gay

identities more salient than more broad gay topics? Finally, will

a speaker use both categorial and acoustic salience strategies to

mark these levels of identity?

In the following section I describe design of the study,

including the participant, recording session information, and the

target variable. I then present the acoustic values of falling

contour declaratives which I analyze for identity related

acoustic value changes. I conclude with a similar analysis of

categorial variations.

Methodology

Participants, Recording Environments, and Materials

J is a twenty-eight year old PR marketer and adult

entertainer. He is a native of rural Pennsylvania who has lived

in southern California for six years. J lives and works in a


predominantly gay neighborhood, and by his own estimate spends

little to no time outside of gay culture. Beyond his general

identity as a gay man, J cultivates a boisterous, party-oriented

persona. This more specific identity is frequently reinforced by

his choice of conversational topics, e.g. alcohol, night clubs,

drunkenness, and outrageous behavior.

My interview consisted of narrative elicitations in order to

best collect natural speech samples. I collected and recorded

narratives from J over the course of two recording sessions in

the presence of a number of his boyfriend and a few close

friends. Each session took place in a casual gay restaurant

located in the same gay neighborhood in which J lives. I chose

these locations specifically to foreground the shared gay

identity of J, his social circle, and myself as interviewer. I

intend this foregrounding to encourage J to express his

particular identity beyond our shared demographic gay identity.

Each recording was made using a ZOOM H1 handheld recorder

and a lavaliere microphone. I adjusted the settings of the

recorder and microphone for each environment in order to maximize

the quality of the recording while avoiding contamination by


background sound in the recording environments. The data under

analysis are drawn from the three purest narratives with the

highest quality recordings, i.e. minimal interruptions,

background noise, etc.

All phonetic analysis was performed using the Praat (version

5) software.

The Variable

This study examines the shape and range of the pitch

contours of declarative statements in J’s narratives. I began by

isolating and numbering the declarative statements in each

narrative. As nuclear pitch and duration are not under

consideration in this study, I did not exclude those utterances

which included a nuclear pitch in a non-utterance-final position.

I here define pitch contour range as the difference of the

maximum and minimum values of f0 in hertz across one clause.

Using pitch plots generated by the Praat software I

categorized each declarative by pitch contour: falling, level, or

rising. I separated each declarative which had either a level or

rising intonation to be considered separately as examples of

categorial salience.


Coding

Having transcribed each narrative and numbered each

utterance, I then coded each declarative with one of three codes.

The three categories correspond to the three levels of

increasingly specific identities. The first category is for

utterances unrelated to either the general gay identity or J’s

specific ‘party-boy’ persona. The second category relates to gay

topics, while the third contains specific identity related

utterances. The codes are summarized with example utterances in

Table 1. A second rater coded the data for an interrater

reliability of 85.5%. All disagreements were settled through

discussion and no data were omitted. The total numbers of each

code type is summarized in Table 2 of Appendix B.

Table 1.

A Summary of Codes Used in this Study

Code Description Example

1 General This code is

for speech

So, I was

waiting in


unrelated to

either the

general gay

identity or

J’s

boisterous,

party-boy

persona.

line.

(Narrative 3,

Line 13)

2 Gay This code is

for speech

related to a

gay identity,

but not

closely

related to

J’s party-boy

identity. It

includes

mentions of

So, I have a

drag queen

friend.

(Narrative 1,

Line 1)


gay community

landmarks,

speech

including gay

lexical

items, and

speech

including

multiple

modifiers

(per Jacobs,

1996).

3 Specific

Identity

This code is

for speech

related to

J’s

boisterous,

party-boy

persona. It

Made it

through an

hour’s worth

of drinking.

(Narrative 3,

Line 2)


includes

mentions of

partying,

drunkenness,

and

outrageous

behavior.

Measures

Using the pitch detection function of Praat, I recorded the

highest and lowest pitch value in Hz for each declarative. I then

calculated the difference of each pair of values and recorded

this value as the pitch range. These values are listed in Tables

3-5 in Appendix B.

Results and Discussion

Acoustic Analysis

Having calculated the pitch range for each declarative, I

calculated the mean pitch range and standard deviation across

each coded category. I used these values to perform a T-Test to

verify the significance of differences between categories. These

values are summarized in Table 6. Figures 1-3 in Appendix C


illustrate the relative contour sizes with a representative

example from each category.

Table 6

Mean Range and SD of Falling Declaratives Across Categories

Category Mean Range (Hz) SD

General 52.42 18.50

Gay 74.89** 32.17

Specific Identity 109.88* 46.45

Note. *p>.05 **p>.01

These results demonstrate that this speaker employs

acoustically salient intonation strategies to mark both gay and

identity specific speech compared to speech about more general

topics. Further, speech more particular to his specific identity

is significantly more acoustically salient than general gay

identity speech. This indicates that the speaker uses

acoustically extreme pitch ranges, a marker of gay speech in

general, to both confirm and support his gay demographic

identity, while at the same time making use of yet more extreme


acoustic strategies to further refine and present his identity as

an out-of-control party boy.

While mean range increases as speech indexes more specific

identities, there is still a great degree of variation even

within categories themselves, as indicated by the increasing

standard deviation values in Table 6. Figure 1 demonstrates the

high degree of potential overlap between categories, despite the

statistically significant differences. The large gray bars

indicate the mean range in Hz for each category, while the thin

black bars represent the standard deviation, itself a measure of

variability within a category.

Figure 4.

Mean Range and SD of Falling Declaratives Across Categories


Categorial Analysis

I have shown the use of acoustic salience strategies by J to

index increasingly specific levels of identity. Categorial

salience is also used to index identities in a similar way. As


Figure 5 shows, as the specificity of the identity category

increases, so does the frequency of non-falling declaratives. All

non-falling declaratives are marked in Tables 3-5 in Appendix B.

Figure 5.

Percentage of Non-Falling Declaratives by Category

J clearly makes use of both acoustic and categorial

strategies when manipulating his intonation to make salient

representations of his identities. Just as J’s gay identity

speech is marked acoustically compared to his general speech, and

his party-boy identity speech is acoustically marked compared to

his gay speech, in each category J makes greater use of

categorially salient non-falling contours in an identical

pattern.


Conclusion

My preliminary study has shown that the broad intonational

ranges perceived as a marker of gay speech is used to index

increasingly specific gay identities. For the speaker observed in

this study, as the indexed identity becomes more specific, the

probability of J employing acoustically or categorially salient

intonation also increases.

When J uses a falling contour on a socially relevant

utterance, he displays a clear tendency to exaggerate the

acoustic range to better communicate the importance of the

statement. Similarly, he also employs non-falling declarative

contours to similarly mark socially salient utterances.

It is clear that J indexes both his demographic identity as

a gay man, as well as his personal party-boy image, with the

latter marked more extremely than the former. J’s variable

intonation strategies can be viewed as part of the complicated

social process of creating, maintaining, and communicating

personal identities.


References

Eckert, P. (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Eckert, P. (2005). Variation, convention, and social meaning. Oakland, CA:Linguistic Society of America paper.

Gaudio, R. P. (1994). Sounding gay: Pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men. American speech, 69(1), 30-57.

Grabe, E. (2002). Variation adds to prosodic typology. In BernardBel & Isabelle Marlien (eds.), Proceedings of the Speech Prosody Conference, 127-132. Aix-en-Provence, France: Laboratoire Parole et Langage.

Hirschberg, J. (2002). The pragmatics of intonational meaning. InBernard Bel & Isabelle Marlien (eds.), Proceedings of the Speech Prosody Conference, 65-68. Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole et Langage.

Jacobs, G. (1996). Lesbian and gay male language use: A critical review of the literature. American Speech, 71(1), 49-71.

Moore, E. (2003). Learning style and identity: A sociolinguistic analysis of a Bolton high school. Manchester, UK: University of Manchester dissertation.

Podesva, R. J. (2011). Salience and the Social Meaning of Declarative Contours Three Case Studies of Gay Professionals. Journal of English Linguistics, 39(3), 233-264.

Podesva, R. J., Roberts, S. J., & Campbell-Kibler, K. (2002). Sharing resources and indexing meanings in the production of gay styles. Language and sexuality: Contesting meaning in theory and practice, 175-89.

Queen, R. (2001). Bilingual intonation patterns: Evidence of language change from Turkish-German bilingual children. Language in Society 30. 55-80.


Smyth, R., Jacobs, G., & Rogers, H. (2003). Male voices and perceived sexual orientation: An experimental and theoretical approach. Language in Society, 32(3), 329-350.


Appendix A

Narrative 1 01 So I have a drag queen friend.02 Her-03 Davina Christina Love04 And she’s.. wonderful.05 Uh and we went to La Fuente right after going

to Rich’s- a local club.06 And go get Mexican food to, you know, try to

get sober.{LG}07 Uhm, when- 08 And then she like had a seizure.09 And she started seizing.10 And we’re sitting at La Fuente11 And she- she got a pork burrito.12 And she-13 So we’re walking outside14 ((So it’s all she all drunk))15 And we’re trying to get in the cab16 She starts seizing.17 And she falls down18 Wig’s off19 Shoes laying over the ground20 And she’s like-21 She comes to, 22 and she’s like,

“Don’t touch me,“Just get the burrito off my foot.

(Laughter)23 “Get the burrito… off... my foot.24 Doesn’t even care.25 Comes up. 26 Stocking, wig off


27 Jessica Simpson hair like dangling from her.28 And bobby pins everywhere.29 It was- she was a hot mess.30 And it was.. Absolutely amazing.

Narrative 2Int So, have you ever had a night out since

you’ve been here that has gone horribly wrong?01 Yeah, Mardi Gras.Int Tell me about Mardi Gras.02 Made it through an hour’s worth of drinking.03 And then, I don’t know.04 Blacked out.05 Peed everywhere.06 Peed on some girl.07 Michael tried to put away my dick when I was

pissing.08 And I-09 He like tucked it in half way,10 And then it was spraying straight up,11 And then he turned me around,12 And there was a restaurant eating,13 And the restaurant could see me pissing,14 And- and then he shuffled me in a cab,15 And I got out and I was falling.16 I don’t know.17 And then we wrestled for like two hours

apparently.18 And I was just-


19 I’m a hot mess.Laughter20 I mean it was a good night.21 I- I had a great time.

Narrative 301 Okay, well most recently I was at Gossip Grill-02 I was at-M Oh, Fiesta.02 We were at Fiesta,03 And I was waiting in line,04 And there’s unisex bathrooms.05 But apparently the big, giant bull dykes that

were in line believe that they w-06 It was their bathroom.07 Even though there’s clearly a whole bunch of

urinals in there.08 And unless she has really good aim,09 I’m pretty sure she doesn’t use them.10 So there-11 One of the guards was blocking the door and

wouldn’t let me in.12 And I was like, okay.13 So I was waiting in line,14 And I was chatting with the other girl.15 And she comes up to me,16 And she’s like,

“You’re really loud.”


17 I was like,“Yeah.I’m from the East Coi- Coast.”

18 I’m like,“I’m at a bar.I’m drunk.And I’m extremely boisterous.”

19 She’s like,“Oh.”“Well, you’re just really loud ((and

then)) you’re being extremely inappropriate.20 And then, I don’t know.21 I kinda just flew off my handle,22 And then I got kicked out.23 And, um, then I yelled outside of Moe’s.24 And then went and got a Jack on the rocks.25 And it was wonderful.


Table 2Number of Falling Utterances by Type

Narrative General Gay SpecificIdentity

1 7 7 8

2 4 1 10

3 9 7 9

Table 3Pitch values of General Coded Declaratives

Narrative Line f0 Max f0 Min f0 Range(Hz)

Contour

1 10 158.1 94.34 63.761 11 152.44 84.8 67.641 13 140.22 100.55 39.671 15 108.12 75.01 33.111 17 159.59 117.54 42.051 19 165.05 101.56 63.491 26 210.56 158.5 52.062 3 107.96 57.82 50.142 11 148.02 91.96 56.062 12 134.36 88.79 45.572 14 149.70 100.6 49.13 3 147.36 92.40 54.963 6 166.96 89.43 77.53 ↑3 10 173.24 111.02 62.223 11 175.37 85.31 90.063 12 186.43 107.71 78.723 13 145.71 110.08 35.633 14 137.41 86.58 50.83


3 15 178.66 125.37 53.293 20 246.32 186.31 60.01

Table 4Pitch values of Gay Coded Declaratives


Contour

1 1 154.5 94.23 60.271 3 132.78 86.26 46.521 4 180.97 58.31 122.661 18 163.43 109.72 53.711 27 217.11 120.05 97.061 28 191.74 76.67 115.071 30 155.08 73.46 81.622 19 136.09 51.80 84.293 1 194.39 103.63 90.763 2 176.53 87.95 88.583 4 191.17 93.13 98.04 ↑3 7 197.62 111.65 85.97 ↑3 8 180.43 102.95 77.483 9 169.63 103.43 66.20 ↑3 25 158.85 103.31 55.54

Table 5Pitch Values of Specific Identity Coded Declaratives


Contour

1 5 122 70.95 51.051 6 244.31 92.32 151.99


1 8 280.79 84.6 196.191 9 163.09 81.36 81.731 16 183.16 95.42 87.741 22 282.79 70.32 212.471 24 294.30 61.54 232.761 25 290.64 159.01 131.632 2 134.38 82.35 52.03 →2 4 99.28 85.07 14.21 →2 5 98.61 74.78 23.83 →2 6 102.75 73.41 29.34 →2 7 114.37 75.78 38.59 →2 9 119.65 96.71 22.94 →2 10 113.86 85.73 28.13 →2 13 123.17 89.98 33.19 →2 15 113.34 80.87 32.47 →2 17 99.09 73.40 25.69 →3 5 239.63 87.31 152.32 ↑3 16 225.16 87.62 137.543 17 253.30 76.96 176.343 18 210.22 87.40 122.823 19 238.66 69.24 169.423 21 214.45 150.32 64.13 ↑3 22 206.66 116.23 90.433 23 154.09 91.07 63.023 24 239.64 120.21 119.43

Figure 1.

Example of a General Category Falling Contour


Figure 2.

Example of a Gay Category Falling Declarative


Figure 3.

Example of a Specific Identity Falling Contour.

Intonation and the Construction of Gay Identities

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