Intersecting Variables and Perceived Sexual Orientation in Men

Sociolinguistic styles tie linguistic resources together into clusters and link them to social contexts of times, groups, places, and activities. Perceptions of masculinity and sexual orientation represent a well-studied area on sociolinguistic perception, offering many variables with potentially relevant social meanings. This study examines social perceptions of guises created by intersecting three masculinity-relevant variables: pitch, /s/-fronting or backing, and (ING). First, 110 online respondents provided descriptions and naturalness ratings of speech samples that were digitially modified to include the different variants; next, 175 respondents rated the speakers on six-point scales based on the terms “smart,” “knowledgeable,” “masculine,” “gay,” “friendly,” “laid-back,” “country,” “educated,” and “confident.” The results showed that /s/-fronting carries strong social meaning across multiple speakers and other linguistic cues, making speakers sound less masculine, more gay and less competent. As documented elsewhere, use of the (ING) variants -ing and -in made speakers sound more or less competent, respectively. The combination of /s/-fronting and (ING), and, independently, /s/-backing, showed more complex effects, shifting relationships between multiple percepts. Taken together, these results provide some support for style-based sociolinguistic models, but also underline the need for more sophisticated statistical treatments of covariation in social perception.