title: Exploring the contribution of voice quality to the perception of gender in Scottish English
Creators: name: Pearce, Jo
Publisher: name: University of Glasgow
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: phonetics, sociolinguistics, gender, perception, phonation, voice quality

description: This study investigates how voice quality, here phonation, aﬀects listener perception of speaker gender, and how voice quality interacts with pitch, a major cue to speaker gender, when cueing gender perceptions. Gender diﬀerences in voice quality have been identiﬁed in both Scottish (Beck and Schaeﬄer 2015; Stuart-Smith 1999) and American English (Abdelli-Beruh et al. 2014; D. Klatt and L. Klatt 1990; Podesva 2013; Syrdal 1996; Wolk et al. 2012; Yuasa 2010). There is evidence from previous research that suggest gender diﬀerences in voice quality may also inﬂuence listener perception of speaker gender, with breathy voice being perceived as feminine or female characteristic by listeners (Addington 1968; Andrews and Schmidt 1997; Bishop and Keating 2012; Holmberg et al. 2010; Porter 2012; Skuk and Schweinberger 2014; Van Borsel et al. 2009) and creaky voice being perceived as masculine characteristic (Greer 2015; Lee 2016). However, some studies have found that voice quality has little eﬀect (Booz and Ferguson 2016; King et al. 2012; Owen and Hancock 2010). The present study seeks to investigate the contribution of voice quality, taking into account the various methods of producing voice quality diﬀerences in stimuli, cultural diﬀerences in gendered meanings of voice quality, and diﬀerent methods of quantifying ‘perceived gender’, which may contribute to the conﬂicting results of previous studies. To investigate the contribution of voice quality to perceptions of speaker gender, a perception experiment was be carried out where 32 Scottish listeners and 40 North American listeners heard stimuli with diﬀerent voice qualities (modal, breathy, creaky) and at diﬀerent pitch levels (120Hz, 165Hz, 210Hz), and were asked to make judgements about the gender of the speaker. Diﬀerences in voice quality were produced by a speaker with the ability to create voice quality distinctions, as well as created through copy synthesis from the speaker’s voice. Listeners were asked to indicate whether they thought the voice belonged to a man or a woman and rate how masculine and feminine the voice sounded. Relative to modal voice, I predicted that listeners would be more likely to categorise breathy voices as women, and would rate them as more feminine and less masculine, and that listeners would be less likely to categorise creaky voices as women, and would rate them as more masculine and less feminine. I also predicted that there might be diﬀerences in how Scottish listeners and North American listeners perceived voice quality, given that the gender diﬀerences in voice quality in these two varieties of English have been found to diﬀer in previous research. Consistent with my predictions, I found that relative to modal voice, listeners were more likely to categorise breathy voice stimuli as women, and rated breathy voice stimuli as more feminine and less masculine. However, in contrast with my predictions, I found that relative to modal voice, listeners were more likely to categorise creaky voice stimuli as women, and rated them as less masculine, but not more feminine. Furthermore, contrary to predictions, I did not identify diﬀerences between Scottish and North American listeners in terms of voice quality perception. Diﬀerences were also found in how breathy and creaky voice inﬂuence gender perception at diﬀerent pitch levels. Overall, these results show that voice quality has an important inﬂuence on listener perception of speaker gender, and that the gendered meanings of creaky voice are changing and have disassociated from its low pitch. Future research should consider whether this evaluation among Scottish listeners this may reﬂect a wider change in the gender diﬀerences in production.