Perceived Gender in Clear and Conversational Speech

Abstract

Clear speech is a speaking style adopted by talkers who perceive a barrier to effective communication. Clear speech has been reported to have acoustic characteristics that are similar to those of speech perceived as feminine (e.g., expanded vowel space, longer vowel duration, and increased fundamental frequency compared with conversational speech). The present study therefore explored whether clear speech is indeed perceived as more feminine than conversational speech by naïve listeners. Clear and conversational sentences produced by 20 male and 21 female talkers were presented to 17 young adults with normal hearing, who used a visual analog scale with “masculine” and “feminine” endpoints to rate the talkers’ gender. Results showed that clear speech was rated significantly more feminine than conversational speech for male talkers but not female talkers (β = −4.273, t = −7.407, p < .001). Perceived femininity was significantly correlated with median fundamental frequency for female (r = .55, p < .001) and male talkers (r = .54, p < .001) and with vowel space perimeter for male talkers (r = .49, p < .001). Perceived femininity was more weakly correlated with fundamental frequency interquartile range (r = .24, p < .001) and speaking rate (r = −.16, p < .001). These results suggest that adopting a clear speaking style may increase perceived femininity. Although using clear speech alone may not suffice for a talker to be perceived as female, it could be used as one of many tools to help talkers achieve more “feminine” speech.