Gay Men’s Speech: A Sociolinguistic Study

Abstract

This bachelor’s dissertation provides a general overview of gay men’s speech, based upon previous studies, for the purpose of questioning the reliability of gay men’s phonological patterns. To that end, the most salient phonological features involved therein have been subjected to analysis, i.e., the hyper-articulation of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ and high-pitched male voices. Considering the above, varied up-to-date sources have been employed in order to tackle this issue. Furthermore, gay men’s speech is addressed within the scope of three different approaches to style-shifting – namely: audience design, speaker design and communication accommodation theory. Thus, this dissertation throws light on some of the reasons that may drive a (gay) speaker to style-shift and questions whether style-shifting should be acknowledged as a distinctive trait of gay men’s speech.