The Influence of Men And Women Sexual Orientation on the Acoustic Features of Spanish Vowels. A Comparative Vocalic Study

Abstract

Historically, from intuitive-oriented positions, certain features of speech have been associated with the identity of communities with a sexual orientation which is not heterosexual. In this respect, some factors are configured from the binary view of what is masculine and what is feminine. From the 1990s, the scientific community has tried to identify the prosodic, articulatory, acoustic and linguistic features which speakers with a different sexual preference have. The purpose of this study was to determine the acoustic characteristics of vowels of Chilean Spanish (/i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/) in single words, read aloud by heterosexual and homosexual speakers, of both genders. The method adopted included reading aloud, data relation, exclusion criteria application and statistical analysis of some data. In general, there are no defined vocalic-acoustic markers to distinguish the sexual orientation of men and women. It is required to consider other linguistic information to establish differences.