Gender identity is indexed and perceived in speech

PLoS One. 2018 Dec 20;13(12):e0209226. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209226. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

This study investigates a possible relationship between perceived and self-ascribed gender identity and the respective acoustic correlates in a group of young heterosexual adult speakers. For the production study, a sample of 37 German speaking subjects (20 males, 17 females) filled out a questionnaire to assess their self-ascribed masculinity/femininity on two scales. A range of acoustic parameters (acoustic vowel space size, fundamental frequency, sibilant spectral characteristics) were measured in speech collected from a picture describing task. Results show that male speakers judging themselves to be less masculine exhibited larger vowel spaces and higher average fundamental frequency.For the perception experiment, a group of 21 listeners (11 males, 10 females) judged masculinity of single word male stimuli drawn from the collected speech sample. A significant correlation between speakers' self-ascribed and listeners' attributed gender identity was found with a stronger relationship for female listeners. Acoustic parameters used by listeners to attribute gender identity include those used by speakers to index masculinity/femininity.The investigation demonstrates the importance of including self-ascribed gender identity as a potential source of inter-speaker variation in speech production and perception even in a sample of heterosexual adult speakers.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Auditory Perception
  • Female
  • Femininity
  • Gender Identity*
  • Germany
  • Heterosexuality
  • Humans
  • Judgment
  • Male
  • Masculinity
  • Self Report
  • Speech Acoustics*
  • Speech Perception*
  • Voice Quality
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

MW was supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG grant WE 5757, http://www.dfg.de/). MW was supported by Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena (ThULB). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.