X-Sender: SteveSlr@aol.com
X-Apparently-To: h-bd@egroups.com
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 13:16:49 EST
Subject: [h-bd] Gays and lisping
Here's a private message from a best selling 
cognitive scientist / linguist / evolutionary psychologist
in response to my article on Al Gore's quasi-lisp
(the "hissy S" sound):


A source of insight on male/female/gay patterns in language
might come from Robin Lakoff's old book "Language and Women's Place."
(Lakoff was Deborah Tannen's graduate advisor.) Once you strip off the
tendentious feminist argumentation, you find a lot of insight into what we
perceive as feminine and masculine ways of talking, which in turn can partly
be captured in terms of dominance. Feminine speech is submissive speech
(needless to say, not all females speak with the characteristic feminine
pattern).


Characteristically gay speech is in some ways exaggerated (supernormal)
feminine speech - imagine the continuum morphing from M to F, and then
extrapolate it a bit past F. (This is true for some, not all, gay speech
patterns.) One of the patterns is precise, hyperarticulated speech (possibly
a polite, hence submissive, reflex - make it as easy as possible for your
listener). A hissy "s" is acoustically a more distinctive "s," because it is
less confusable with "f," "th," "sh," "t," and so on. So if gay speech is
exaggerated feminine speech, which is overly polite and hence overly
enunciated speech, the mystery of the gay hissy "s" is solved.