Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Japanese women have been found to have higher pitches than Dutch women. This finding has been explained in the past by assuming that Japanese women raise their pitch in order to project a vocal image associated with feminine attributes of powerlessness. In the present study three hypotheses underlying such an assumption were tested experimentally: (1) the association of high pitch with attributes of physical and psychological powerlessness (short, weak, dependent, modest) in the Dutch and Japanese cultures, (2) a stronger differentiation between the ideal woman and man, in terms of powerlessness/power, in Japan than in the Netherlands, and (3) a preference for high pitch in women in Japan and for medium or low pitch in women in the Netherlands. All three hypotheses were confirmed. However, results also suggest a strong emphasis in Japan on masculinity in men, possibly leading to a lowering of pitch.

Keywords

Japanese pitch stereotypes Dutch

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

BROUWER, D. (1989). Gender variation in Dutch: A sociolinguistic study of Amsterdam speech. Dordrecht/Providence: Foris Publications.

CHARPENTIER, F., & MOULINES, E. (1989). Pitch synchronous waveform processing technique for text to speech synthesis using diphones. Proceedings Eurospeech Paris, 13–19.

FITCH, J.L. , & HOLBROOK, A. (1970). Modal vocal fundamental frequency of young adults. Archives of Otolaryngology, 92, 379–382.

HANLEY, T.D. , & SNIDECOR, J.C. (1967). Some acoustic similarities among languages. Phonetica, 17, 141–148.

HERMES, D.J. , & van GESTEL, J.C. (1991). The frequency scale of speech intonation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 90, 97–102.

HOLLIEN, H., TOLHURST, G.C., & McGLONE, R.E. (1982). Speaking fundamental frequency as a function of vocal intensity. Unpublished report to the Dreyfus Foundation.

KROOK, M.I. P. (1988). Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of normal Swedish subjects obtained by glottal frequency analysis. Folia Phoniatrica, 40, 82–90.

LEE, M.Y. (1976). The married woman's status and role as reflected in Japanese: An exploratory sociolinguistic study. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1, 991–999.

LOVEDAY, L. (1981). Pitch, politeness, and sexual role: An exploratory investigation into the pitch correlates of English and Japanese politeness formulae. Language and Speech, 24, 97–107.

10.

LOVEDAY, L. (1986). Explorations in Japanese sociolinguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

11.

OHALA, J.J. (1983). Cross-language use of pitch: an ethological view. Phonetica, 40, 1–18.

12.

OHALA, J.J. (1994). The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch. In L. Hinton , J. Nichols , & J. J. Ohala (eds.) Sound symbolism. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 325–347.

13.

OHARA, Y. (1992). Gender dependent pitch levels: A comparative study in Japanese and English. In K. Hall, M. Bucholtz, & B. Moonwomon (eds.), Locating power. Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, Vol. 2, 468–477.

14.

OKAMOTO, S. , & SATO, S. (1992). Less feminine speech among young Japanese females. In K. Hall, M. Bucholtz, & B. Moonwomon (eds.), Locating power. Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, Vol. 2, 478–488.

15.

RIETVELD, T. , & van HOUT, R. (1993). Statistical techniques for the study of language and language behaviour. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

16.

SMITH, J.S. (1992). Women in charge: Politeness and directives in the speech of Japanese women. Language in Society, 21, 59–82.

17.

STOICHEFF, M.L. (1981). Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of nonsmoking female adults. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 24, 437–411.

18.

TERASAWA, R. , KAKITA, Y. , & HIRANO, M. (1984). Simultaneous measurements of mean air flow rate, fundamental frequency and voice intensity: Results from thirty normal male and thirty female subjects. Onseigengoigaku, 25, 189–207.

19.

TSUGE, S. , KAKAMI, K. , & FUKAYA, M. (1987). Speakers' height, weight and voice pitch (1): On correlation of speakers' height, weight, and pitch frequencies of Japanese five vowels. Bull. Phonet. Jap., 185, 2–5.

20.

YAMAZAWA, H. , & HOLLIEN, H. (1992). Speaking fundamental frequency of Japanese women. Phonetica, 49, 128–140.

Sociocultural Aspects of Pitch Differences between Japanese and Dutch Women

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References