14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)

San Francisco, CA, USA
August 1-7, 1999


Biological Gender and Social Gender in Relation to Voice Quality

Monique Biemans, Renée van Bezooijen

Nijmegen University, the Netherlands

This paper addresses part of a study into the relation between gender and voice quality. Results are presented of perceptual voice quality descriptions by phonetically naive listeners and the attribution of gender-related personality traits on the basis of voice samples, in relation to the speakers' biological gender (the sex of the speakers) and social gender (gender identity). Strong relations were found between the voice descriptions and the gender attributions, especially between 'dynamic' gender-related personality traits (e.g. enterprising, self-assured) and e.g. the voice features fast, relaxed, varied. Relations between biological and social gender on the one hand and the voice descriptions and the gender attributions on the other hand are marginal.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Biemans, Monique / Bezooijen, Renée van (1999): "Biological gender and social gender in relation to voice quality", In ICPhS-14, 1249-1252.