Differences between male and female speakers have been explained in
terms of biological inevitabilities but also in terms of behavioral
and socially motivated factors. The aim of this study is to investigate
the latter by examining gender-specific variability within the same
gender.
The speech of 29 German men and women — all of them expecting
their first child but varying in the time they plan to stay at home
during their child’s first year (parental role) — is analyzed.
Acoustic analyses comprise the vowel space size and the realization
of the inter-sibilant contrast.
While the data is
part of a larger longitudinal project investigating adult- and infant-directed
speech during the infant’s first year of life, this study concentrates
on the recordings made before the birth of the child. Inter-speaker
variability is investigated in relation to 1) the chosen parental role
and 2) self-ascribed ratings on positive feminine attributes (gender
identity).
Results show that both factors (planned duration of parental leave
and the femininity ratings) contribute to the variability found between,
but also within the same gender. In particular, the vowel space size
was found to be positively correlated with self-ascribed femininity
ratings in male speakers.
Cite as: Weirich, M., Simpson, A.P. (2017) Acoustic Correlates of Parental Role and Gender Identity in the Speech of Expecting Parents. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 924-928, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1394
@inproceedings{weirich17_interspeech,
author={Melanie Weirich and Adrian P. Simpson},
title={{Acoustic Correlates of Parental Role and Gender Identity in the Speech of Expecting Parents}},
year=2017,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2017},
pages={924--928},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1394}
}