The Homosexual Lisp: Is it Real?
Last Thursday I did a story on accents and where they come from. While I was looking into the story, a friend of mine asked about the stereotypical “lisp” that is often associated with homosexual males.Benjamin Munson is a professor at the University of Minnestoa, who’s extensively studied sexual preference and speech. So I shot the question off to him, and he gave an unbelievably detailed and interesting response. It was far too much to include in the broader story on accents, but I thought I’d share some of his comments here. If you’d like to read his entire response, he’s put it on his blog.
“Do gay men lisp, in the sense of producing misarticulated “s” sounds? The short answer is No. The long answer is even more interesting.
At least three studies report that the characteristics of “s” in some self identified gay men is in the opposite direction of what we would expect if the these talkers were producing a ‘lisped’ “s.” They were actually closer to the productions of a hyper-correct, carefully produced “s”. Let’s call this “clear s”. These production patterns are not the inevitable consequence of a person’s self-stated sexuality. Though there is a stronger tendency for gay-identified men to produce the “clear s” variant than heterosexual men, some gay-identified men don’t produce this variant, and some heterosexual men do.
Maybe the “lisp” stereotype arose as part of a broader popular-culture belief that gay men were somehow weaker, more ineffectual, and child-like—after all, children lisp. We can find some evidence for it by looking at portrayals of gay men in film, particularly in the middle of the last century. Gay male characters were often portrayed as weak and ineffective. Part of this portrayal was often a lisp. Perhaps the lisp was intended as a cue to the audience that they should view the character as child-like and weak. I emphasize that this is just one conjecture about the origin of this stereotype.”
Ben continued with a thought that really applies to why Minnesotans have a similar accent, why Bostonians speak the same, frankly, why any group starts to sound similar to each other:
Some groups can use one particular variety of a sound to show—either intentionally or unintentionally—that they are members of a particular social group, and another group can use a different variant. The question of sexuality and “s” isn’t unique here.
Interesting stuff, and something to think about over the weekend. Thanks Ben.