# Do Gays Lisp? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [June 18, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108 "2014-06-18T22:36:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/21 "2014-06-19T17:40:39Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > I’m not gay, and I had the R-lisp in elementary school which was cured by speech therapy. My son had a similar problem, and his daughter ditto, so I wonder if there’s a genetic component? Or if it’s just very common that kidth lithp? There’s either a genetic component, or siblings have a greater influence over the way one another pronounce things, even after one has been corrected in speech therapy. I have this on authority from a school speech therapist who says she sees siblings with the W-R substitution over and over, and hears parents report they had the same problem, but doesn’t see siblings with other impediments, necessarily, other than twins, including non-identical twins, in which case she suspects they are just reinforcing each other’s mistake. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/22 "2014-06-19T18:03:05Z")
All of the people I’ve known with lisps were straight. Anecdote. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/23 "2014-06-19T18:18:41Z")
Pronouncing R sounds as W sounds is called [rhotacism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism). The term is a little confusing, though, as it refers to various forms of “misuse” of R sounds. “Lisp” only refers to the pronunciation of sibilant sounds (like S or Z). ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/24 "2014-06-19T18:23:05Z")
One of the more useful terms I’ve picked up from the Dope is the word sociolect, like a dialect, except defined by one’s social group. While I’ve never known any gay men who lisped, I’ve known plenty who have had the gay sociolect. This resonated with me as I’m a computer geek, and sound like one - any random person I talk to would assume that I work with computers because of my computer geek sociolect. I honestly don’t know where I picked it up, but I believe the gay sociolect is acquired in the same way, that you pick up speech patterns from what you read, watch and listen to. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/25 "2014-06-19T18:38:37Z")
I’d say that the so-called “gay lisp” is not a lisp, anyways. It’s just a highly frontal and high larynxed way of talking. I other words, they speak from the front of their mouth and not the back. It can get really close to a lisp, but it never sounds anything like people with an actual lisp. For actual lisps, the stereotype I am most familiar with is that they are nerds. ---
**Author:** ![Blackfaer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@Blackfaer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackfaer)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/26 "2014-06-19T19:36:40Z")
> [@susan](#): > > Answer: No. I have never met a gay man who lisps. And I’ve known a LOT of gay men. I have, including David Sedaris. I’ve known many more gay men who don’t. The Seattle Mens Chorus is, depending on the year, anywhere from all to mostly gay and is around 250 members. There are several of them with lisps, but as others have pointed out there is much more of a vocal mannerism that isn’t really lisping, but is a distinct effeminate mannerism. The majority of SMC (probably around 60%) have this mannerism - but then, it’s an easily learned affectation, so it’s hard to say how many of them it’s a learned affectation for, versus how many of them came by it in childhood and default naturally to that mannerism rather than turning it on because their culture celebrates it. The other large minority of SMC tend to be more easily mistaken for straight men than those with the feminine mannerisms (either vocal or physical or both) Personally, I’ve been mistaken for gay many, many times, though I’m not particularly feminine nor do I lisp. I am small, have a higher-pitched voice for a man, and work in theatre, so there are other things at play there. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![stui\_magpie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stui_magpie/32/11010_2.png) [@stui\_magpie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stui_magpie)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/27 "2014-06-20T00:59:42Z")
> [@stpauler](#): > > \*\*Growing up, I sounded like a gay Elmer Fudd. \*\*My Rs were Ws and my Esses were THs dipthongs. YEARS of speech therapy and I learned to control my tongue properly. > > I’d have to say the lisp in America does tend to follow that syllogism. That not all gays have a lisp, but most who have a lisp are gay. Sorry, but I actually laughed out loud at that bit.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/28 "2014-06-20T13:35:21Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > The quote from David Sedaris is interesting, and I know that for him (at least, this seems clear from the quote) the behaviors he describes are intimately tied in with his experience of his own sexuality. But I think what he’s describing isn’t actually a link between lisping and gayness, it’s a link between lisping and femininity, which is entirely different. (It’s the old sexuality/gender distinction.) What’s feminine about lisping? Girls don’t lisp at anything approaching the rate of boys. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![DT5000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@DT5000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DT5000)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/29 "2014-06-20T16:38:31Z")
I had this conversation with a friend recently. We both agreed that there seems to be a tendency in many gay men to prolong the “s” sound that is often paired with over-enunciation. And while is not all gays, I have a hard time thinking of any straight men that I know who do that. I sometimes interpret this phenomenon as; a) wanting to stand out, b) hoping to "charm’ or “enchant” their listeners, and/or c) wanting to overstate their queerness. These could all be based on the concept of higher-pitched sounds being more “audible” to humans than grave ones. A more speculative theory I have could be connected to an obscure mechanism to counteract ADHD, autism, or communication deficiencies - something many of them seem to battle with in their own very peculiar ways. 😉 Cheers ---
**Author:** ![DT5000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@DT5000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DT5000)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/30 "2014-06-20T18:30:50Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Castilian just means Spanish, when talking about languages. And the story goes that it was a king, I believe. But it’s not true, of course. > [@MacLir](#): > > Castilian dialect, to be exact. The story goes that a princess had a speech impediment and they copied her, since She Was The Princess. 😛 > > No guarantees as to historical veracity. > > If you listen to Mocedades singing “Eres Tu” you can hear the -th- in some of the words. > [@Bozuit](#): > > Try Spain. Castilian may be understood to be the more proper use of the Spanish language in terms of grammar, pronunciation, and lexicon choice and richness. In this particular topic, I would like to clarify that, just like in the English language, the S:/s/, and Z: /th/, phonemes differ in proper Spanish. Such differentiation will allow the listener to verbally distinguish between words like “losa”: flagstone, and “loza”:crockery. Additionally, the letters Z and C may form the same /th/ phoneme in certain cases. Eg. “Tazón”: bowl, and “Noción”: notion. This particular differentiation is not observed, however, in certain areas of southern Spain, in certain ethnic groups like the “Gitanos” (gypsies), nor anywhere in the Americas where the differentiation is a product of logical scrutiny based on the context of the conversation and not on its pronunciation. Needless to say, neglecting the proper use of these phonemes may, although rarely, yield to misunderstanding one another. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/31 "2014-06-20T18:58:48Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > What’s feminine about lisping? Girls don’t lisp at anything approaching the rate of boys. > Powers &8^] I didn’t say there is anything feminine about lisping. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/32 "2014-06-20T19:35:57Z")
> [@MacLir](#): > > Castilian dialect, to be exact. Really? I thought I heard more lisping where Catalan was spoken. > [@Bozuit](#): > > Castilian just means Spanish, when talking about languages. True, but I bet there is a Castilian accent, versus, say, Andalusian. I thought I heard differences between the two. Even a common word like “gracias” seemed to be pronounced very differently in different regions. I don’t speak Spanish much at all so I couldn’t identify accents, but I did note marked differences that seemed at least partially regional. It was interesting seeing written Catalan. It looked like Spanish written by a Frenchman. Oops, we were talking about gays. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/33 "2014-06-20T19:48:55Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > The quote from David Sedaris is interesting, and I know that for him (at least, this seems clear from the quote) the behaviors he describes are intimately tied in with his experience of his own sexuality. But I think what he’s describing isn’t actually a link between lisping and gayness, it’s a link between lisping and femininity, which is entirely different. (It’s the old sexuality/gender distinction.) I suspect you’re right. From wikipedia on “gay lisp”, > [@](#): > > Peter Renn’s undergraduate study (which won a George H. Mitchell Undergraduate Award) demonstrated that gay-stereotyped speech more strongly correlates with childhood gender-nonconformity than with sexual orientation and proposed that gay-stereotyped speech is actually childhood-gender-nonconformity speech that has become associated with male homosexuality only by proxy.[11] [11][Renn, Peter. “Subtypes of Male Homosexuality: Speech, male sexual orientation, and childhood gender nonconformity”.](http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/psy158h/prevhonors/z111/project.htm) My impression has always been that a lisp correlates more to effeminacy than to homosexuality, and isn’t a strong correlate in either case. Gay speech patters are better indicators, but far from perfect. Of course, about half of the gay men I’ve known had no indicators at all, other than that they had boyfriends. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/34 "2014-06-20T20:07:07Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > What’s feminine about lisping? Girls don’t lisp at anything approaching the rate of boys. Certain women once did, at least as a cultural/dramatic convention, along with other aspects of “feminine” baby talk. “Daddykinth buy ikki baby a dweat big mink?” ---
**Author:** ![Slpprof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7c8e57/32.png) [@Slpprof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slpprof)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2014, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/35 "2014-06-21T12:08:45Z")
There is a scholarly literature on this, actually.: Mack, S., & Munson, B. (2012). The association between /s/ quality and perceived sexual orientation of men’s voices: implicit and explicit measures. Journal of Phonetics, 40, 198–212. Munson, B. (2011). The Influence of Actual and Imputed Talker Gender on Fricative Perception, Revisited. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130, 2631-2634. Munson, B. (2011). Lavender lessons learned, or, what sexuality can teach us about phonetic variation. American Speech, 86, 14-31. Munson, B. (2010). The Influence of Actual and Perceived Sexual Orientation on Diadochokinetic Rate in Women and Men. In the Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH 2010) (p. 1525-1528). ISSN 1990-9772. Chiba, Japan. Munson, B., & \*Solum, R. (2010). When is Indexical Information about Speech Activated? Evidence from a Cross-Modal Priming Experiment. In the Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH 2010) (p. 1521-1524). ISSN 1990-9772. Chiba, Japan. Munson, B., & \*Coyne, A.C. (2010). The Influence of Apparent Vocal-Tract Size, Contrast Type, and Implied Sources of Variation on the Perception of American English Voiceless Lingual Fricatives. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan (special issue: “Advances in Laboratory Phonology and Experimental Optimality Theory”), 14, 48-59. Smith, E.A., Hall, K.C., & Munson, B. (2010). Bringing semantics to sociophonetics: social variables and secondary entailments. Journal of Laboratory Phonology, 1, 121-155. Munson, B. (2010). Levels of phonological abstraction and knowledge of socially motivated speech-sound variation: a review, a proposal, and a commentary on the Papers by Clopper, Pierrehumbert, and Tamati; Drager; Foulkes; Mack; and Smith, Hall, and Munson. Journal of Laboratory Phonology, 1, 157-177. Munson, B. (2010). Variation, implied pathology, social meaning, and the ‘gay lisp’: a response to Van Borsel et al. (2009). Journal of Communication Disorders, 43, 1–5. Munson, B. (2009). Pathology or social indexing? In C. Bowen, Children’s Speech Sound Disorders. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 342-346. ---
**Author:** ![Blackfaer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@Blackfaer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackfaer)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/36 "2014-06-21T17:37:46Z")
:eek: That’s a lot of scholarly literature. Who wants to volunteer to read through it all and sum it up for the rest of us? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2014, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/37 "2014-06-21T19:21:15Z")
While it’s a long list, it’s all one author (Munson, B)… ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2014, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/38 "2014-06-21T21:32:39Z")
As a gay man with many, MANY gay 20 and 30 something friends, I can honestly say I’ve never met one with a lisp. I have however, met MANY who “sound gay” for whatever that means. And I myself, at times, will slip into that gay sociolect when I am feeling particularly happy or excited about something, or just hanging out with all of my gay friends. It’s an unconscious thing, but yes, I do feel like gay guys who spend a lot of time with other gay guys do tend to pick up a few telling speech patterns that “sound gay” to gays and straight people alike. Jack from “Will and Grace” was a good example of this. Nathan Lane too. Not lispers, but they just sound gay. And a lot of us do. Many of course, do not, at all, sound even a little bit gay. ---
**Author:** ![Blackfaer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@Blackfaer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackfaer)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/39 "2014-06-22T01:53:54Z")
Perhaps we should call it an accent? I don’t ever slip into “sounding gay” when hanging with gay friends, (that I’ve noticed) but I do pick up accents when hanging with friends from other regions. I’d imagine it’s the same subconscious trick. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108/40 "2014-06-22T15:05:49Z")
> [@Blackfaer](#): > > Perhaps we should call it an accent? Because it’s not an accent. Harvey Milk, for example, had a Long Island Jewish _accent_ overlaid with the gay _sociolect_. I have no idea where the idea that gay men lisp came from. My theory is that is was inaccurate mockery of the gay sociolect by straight men. I’ve known plenty of gay men who had the gay sociolect, and varying levels of effeminate behavior - but I’ve also known straight men who had effeminate mannerisms. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-gays-lisp/691108.md?page=3)