Current Projects

• “Sounding gay and straight” in Sevillian Spanish: My dissertation investigates the tener pluma stereotype in Andalusian Spanish, challenging traditional views of sociophonetic variation. It examines how syllable-final /s/ durations and spectral center of gravity vary among gay, bisexual, and straight Sevillian speakers, with adjustments reflecting societal stereotypes and intended social personae. Employing a performance-based methodology that emphasizes social personae, this research highlights how linguistic choices shape social identities. Notably, the /s/ consonant emerges as an “iconic” signal in gay male speech across languages (Calder, 2020). By incorporating the concept of social personae (D’Onofrio, 2020) into sociophonetics, the study underscores the role of linguistic choices in expressing social identities and reaffirms style as a reflection of ideology (Eckert, 2023).

• Suprasegmental patterns in Andalusian Spanish across LGBTQ+ and straight speaker groups: This project dives deeper into the prosodic phonetic nuances among sexual orientation groups. It underscores variation in pitch accents and intonation, especially in declaratives, exclamatives and imperatives. Employing Sp_ToBI notation, the aim is to broaden our grasp on Spanish intonation, enhancing its relevancy across linguistic studies.

• Perception of speech and sexual identity in Andalusian Spanish: My subsequent project explores listeners’ ability to differentiate gay from heterosexual male speakers using varying speech lengths. This includes discerning which acoustic cues are prioritized and assessing if gay listeners more accurately identify gay speech patterns. Expanding on perception, I will utilize a matched-guise test to examine listener judgments based on various acoustic cues, leading to analyses of listener reliance on single or multiple phonemes. Ultimately, I will explore the accuracy disparity between gay and straight listeners in identifying speakers.