Voice quality and gender stereotypes: A study on Lebanese women with Reinke's edema

Nayla Matar (1) , Cristel Portes (1) , Leonardo Lancia (1) , Thierry Legou (1) , Fabienne Baider (2)

1 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage
2 University of Cyprus = Université de Chypre

Purpose: Women with Reinke's edema (RW) report being mistaken for men during telephone conversations. For this reason, their masculine sounding voices are interesting for the study of gender stereotypes. The study's objective is to verify their complaint and to understand the cues used in gender identification. Methods: Using a self-evaluation study, we verified RW's perception of their own voices. We compared the acoustic parameters of vowels produced by 10 RW to those produced by 10 men (NM) and 10 women (NW) with normal voices, in Lebanese Arabic. We conducted a perception study for the evaluation of RW, NM and NW voices by naïve listeners. Results: RW self-evaluated their voices as masculine and their gender identities as feminine. The acoustic parameters that distinguish RW from NW voices concern fundamental frequency, spectral slope, harmonicity of the voicing signal and complexity of the spectral envelop. Naïve listeners very often rate RW as surely masculine. Conclusions: Listeners may rate RW's gender incorrectly. These incorrect gender ratings are correlated with acoustic measures of fundamental frequency and voice quality. Further investigations will reveal the contribution of each of these parameters to gender perception and guide the treatment plan of patients complaining of an ambiguous voice.

Mots clés: Social communication; Speech perception; Speech production; Voice; Gender

Domaines: Linguistique; Linguistique; Médecine humaine et pathologie; Sociologie

Nayla Matar, Cristel Portes, Leonardo Lancia, Thierry Legou, Fabienne Baider. Voice quality and gender stereotypes: A study on Lebanese women with Reinke's edema. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2016, 59(6), pp.S1608-S1617. ⟨hal-01459619⟩