In Search of Gay Language

Jeffrey T. Runner
Department of Linguistics
University of Rochester

Varieties of Language

The varieties of language used in

different places may be quite different

Or more similar

English, Hindi
Spanish, Italian

Or even the same language

US English, British English, Australian

English

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]

Variables that Affect

Variation

Geography

US/England (see above)

Different locations within US
Vocabulary:
soda/pop/tonic/coke
pail/bucket

Pronunciation:
Northeast coffee: [kfi]
West Coast coffee: [kafi]

Variables that Affect

Variation

Socioeconomic factors

Labov (1972)
fourth floor study (Saks, Macys, S. Klein)
Roughly: correlation between degree of rlessness and socioeconomic group in NYC

Ethnicity

African-American English
Chicano English
Indian English

Variables that Affect

Variation

Geography, socioeconomics,
ethnicity

Proximity explanation
People who live together
People who work together
People who form a kind of community

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?

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)

Lakoffs Womens Language

From Lakoff (1972)

Vocabulary for fine color distinctions

Use of meaningless particles

John is here, isnt he?

Rising intonation for declarative sentences

adorable, charming, sweet, lovely, divine

Use of tag questions

oh dear, oh fudge

Use of certain adjectives

mauve, beige, ecru, lavendar

Q: When will dinner be ready? A: Oh, around 6?

Greater variability in intonational contour

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)

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?

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 nonmainstream sexual practices, such as SM

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)

Gay Language?

This question has been investigated

from several angles
Vocabulary

Completely different terms/phrases

Particular senses for familiar words
(especially sexual vocabulary)

Pronunciation

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

Stanley (1970)

Examples from glossary

Bluff (butch+fluff): 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

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

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

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 oralgenital 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)

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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, gender
sexuality (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

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/bisexuality directly?

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

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

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<.01)
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)

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

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 45:45-59.