Lesbian Pitch Level and Span: A Case Study of Cameron Esposito

This study investigates the pitch level and span of comedian Cameron Esposito in conversation with four groups of interlocutors: straight women, lesbian women, gay men, and straight men. While lesbian women have their own unique linguistic behaviors (e.g. [1]), speakers, regardless of sexual orientation, often accommodate to their interlocutor to signify a common social identity ([2], [3]). Research suggests that pitch level and span may be a source of phonetic variation between straight and lesbian women ([1], [4]). Furthermore, recent research shows that queer speakers can modulate stereotypically queer acoustic variants based on their interlocutor ([5]), in line with [6], who proposed that differences in speech between queer and straight speakers would only be found where community solidarity is desired. This research endeavors to answer the following questions: between every 10ms using a Praat script with a maximum pitch setting of 500Hz. Tokens that fell within the upper or lower 5% were removed to eliminate extreme values. Calculations of average pitch level in Hertz and span in semitones, as well as statistical analysis, were conducted in R. A multiple linear regression analysis suggests significant results are present for pitch level and span with straight male interlocutors across discourse Esposito both lowers her average pitch level and speaks with a narrower pitch span when in conversation with the straight male podcasters used in this study. There is no significant difference between queer interlocutors in pitch level or span. These results are discussed in the context of communication accommodation ([8]) and linguistic markers of sexual orientation (e.g. [9]).