Sexuality and sociophonetics

Early work in the field of sociophonetics and sexuality attempted to show how the speech of gay men and women was quantitatively different from the speech of straight men and women. This approach was based on the idea that social constructs such as class and age influence patterns of linguistic variation. Since the early 1990s, researchers have moved away from a deterministic view of language use and have adopted a more social constructionist approach to sexuality. Recent research has also considered how speakers manipulate their speech in the construction of their social identity, the extent to which speech functions as an indicator of a person’s sexual orientation, and how the manipulation of speech can impact on the perception of a speaker’s sexuality and gender. This entry outlines some of the major developments in the study of sexuality and sociophonetics.