This article describes the development of
a data bank of 25 male voices spanning the range from very
gay-sounding to very straight-sounding, according to listener
ratings. These ratings allowed the researchers to examine the
effects of different discourse types (scientific, dramatic,
and spontaneous) and listener groups (gay males vs. a mix of
males and females of unknown sexual orientation) on how listeners
perceived the voices. The effects of lexical and pragmatic content
were explored by a comparison of spoken and written presentations
of the same spontaneous speech samples. The effect of asking
participants to rate the voices using different constructs (e.g.,
masculine/feminine vs. gay-sounding/straight-sounding)
is discussed. The ultimate goal of this research program is
to examine correlations between these ratings and a range of
phonetic variables in order to shed light on the specific features
to which listeners attend when judging whether a man's
voice sounds gay or straight.