THE gay lisp?

[Snozzle]

BTW your meme-theorists postulate genetic inheritance is one of the processes through which memes evolve at your wikipedia link:

Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success.

It doesnt say "genetic" inheritance. It would be memetic inheritance, i.e. the kid picks up a meme because their parent/s have it and pass it on, actively or passively. In fact a vast proportion of memes, such as language (including dialect and accent), ways of thinking, religion, are passed down that way.

Excuse me if this has been covered, but I have a hunch that a gay lisp was once a secret identifier, like Polari (the obsolescent gay vocabulary). I remember a kind of gay accent, not a lisp, but a way of swallowing one's speech, some decades ago. Now we don't need it, I think it's died.

 

[Rugbypup]

It doesnt say "genetic" inheritance. It would be memetic inheritance, i.e. the kid picks up a meme because their parent/s have it and pass it on, actively or passively. In fact a vast proportion of memes, such as language (including dialect and accent), ways of thinking, religion, are passed down that way.

Beautiful said, chur bro.

 

[Snozzle]

BTW your meme-theorists postulate genetic inheritance is one of the processes through which memes evolve at your wikipedia link:

Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success.

It doesnt say "genetic" inheritance. It would be memetic inheritance, i.e. the kid picks up a meme because their parent/s have it and pass it on, actively or passively. In fact a vast proportion of memes, such as language (including dialect and accent), ways of thinking, religion, are passed down that way.

Excuse me if this has been covered, but I have a hunch that a gay lisp was once a secret identifier, like Polari (the obsolescent gay vocabulary). I remember a kind of gay accent, not a lisp, but a way of swallowing one's speech, some decades ago. Now we don't need it, I think it's died.

 

[DiscoBoy]

A number of people did claim to hate both the "gay lisp" and the men who possessed it in the lengthy "do non feminine gay men exist?" thread which has recently been deleted BTW:

http://www.lpsg.org/87799-do-non-effeminate-gay-men.html

I was specifically talking about this thread.

 

[heist]

If it were, you are basically saying that some gay men, predominately effeminate gay men have a genetic disorder resulting in the characteristics camp gay lisp.

If the lisp were genetic, it would also manifest in straight men and straight, gay women. It does not.

I think most geneticists would be hard-pressed to agree. A genetic "disorder" (as you so nicely put it) isn't necessarily visibly distributed throughout both genders because of sex-based epistasis. For example, say there were a gene that caused facial hair to grow particularly curly -- would you see it in women? (Probably not.) Besides, as we see from other posts, apparently it does "manifest" in straight men. (But that's not the point.)

Making a genetic argument is too tricky because it's very hard to prove either way until you do extensive studies. That's why we've only found height genes that together cause ~2% of height variation in humans. We just don't know enough yet.


That said, I find the most compelling clues regarding the gay "lisp" to be how people can force themselves to develop it and essentially "learn" it, much like how people can change their accent from Southern to New England. As far as I see, it's just another way of speaking.

Now, whether people should speak with a gay "lisp" is another argument entirely.

 

[Rugbypup]

I think most geneticists would be hard-pressed to agree. A genetic "disorder" (as you so nicely put it) isn't necessarily visibly distributed throughout both genders because of sex-based epistasis. For example, say there were a gene that caused facial hair to grow particularly curly -- would you see it in women? (Probably not.) Besides, as we see from other posts, apparently it does "manifest" in straight men. (But that's not the point.)

Making a genetic argument is too tricky because it's very hard to prove either way until you do extensive studies. That's why we've only found height genes that together cause ~2% of height variation in humans. We just don't know enough yet.

To clarify, I am not making a genetic argument, I'm countering it from another poster.

 

[heist]

Rugbypup, what I'm saying is that your counterargument is incorrect as well. I can see how you might think I just read your post out of context and wrote a response -- many people do that on boards like these. But earlier, you stated:

Furthermore, there is no gene or chromosome that determines accents or the way we speak. What's next a Brummi accent gene? A Mancunian accent gene?

...

There is an interesting idea that we learn certain behaviors over inheriting them. Memes over genes. Which brings us back to the 'gay lisp' being a learned trait, not a genetic expression.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

This demonstrates that you clearly prefer the view that it is entirely outside of genetics. And my point was that both extremes -- calling it either completely genetic or completely learned -- is an oversight (a very simple point) because we don't understand the genetics enough. Thus, I still find that arguing genetics is useless for our purposes.

Perhaps you don't actually believe what you wrote, or maybe you merely misstated your case. But if you recognize that you don't believe it, and yet you still use the argument (which you don't believe in), you are doing a disservice to the argument.


Getting back to the debate at hand, I think we all know that people can change their accents (by will or not). Some have an easier time than others. But does the fact that accents can be changed mean that we can force people to change their accents?

This is central to our debate. If we can force people to change their accents, and people don't like the gay "lisp", then by all means, we should force people to get rid of it. If not, then we should learn to live with it.

 

[gymfresh]

Why do some men have it? Where does it come from?

I think what some people casually and overbroadly call a lisp is a hypersibilance. A prime example would be the gay comedian Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall doing his "Honesssstly, what'ssss the big deal about a few exsssstra SSSS's?" skit as campy homosexual Buddy Cole.

Having lived in the major cities (NYC, Chicago, Miami, LA) and small towns, I've only found it in big cities where there are the gay neighborhoods. For me, it just seems all the big stereotypes are enhanced when you're in a gay bubble. Small town gay guys that are "feminine" are usually just quiet, shy, passive, nice...which I don't find that unattractive..

Strange, my experience has been just the opposite. I've lived all over the US, and noticed it's mainly in the towns and smaller cities where gays are really into drag shows with lots of boas and pretending they're "women". When I lived in Chicago and New York, we went to our investment banking jobs in Armani suits, buffed up for 2 hours at the gym, and came home and fucked. No time for drag shows. OK OK there were froofie brunches and weekend trips to Pierre Deux. But no squealing or lisping.

The Spanish (with the exception some in the south) only pronounce Cs and Zs as "th". They pronounce S the same way as the English. It is a characteristic of Catalan Spanish and is only rarely heard in Latin America. It is NOT a "gay lisp"!

Right... though it's mainly a characteristic of Castilian Spanish (and to a lesser extent in Cataluña). We do it because the "z" is a direct pick-up from the Greek "theta". It also makes Castilian Spanish a lot easier to spell correctly because certain words with very different meanings are pronounced differently, like "casa" and "caza". Most of the sailors that Columbus and subsequent captains picked up for their voyages came from villages in the SW of Spain - Extremadura and Andalucia - and when they stayed behind in Latin America that accent dominated the region.

 

[jjsjr]

I've got a lisp.

If you want to hear a lisp, listen to the comedian Ant or some other gay actors/singers/comedians as they talk.... You'll hear it and how it differs from a heterosexual male's speech. The lisp exists in all ranges of vocal depth, not necessarily men with high pitched voices.

So do with it what you want, but it is nearly inevitable when you have feminine thoughts, they translate into feminine speech. When I discovered that my voice made me sound gay, I had to alter my manner of speaking so my highschool peers wouldn't chastise me over it.

Turn off or not, it exists. My partner doesn't have it at all and we've been together for 3 years now.

 

[Rugbypup]

Rugbypup, what I'm saying is that your counterargument is incorrect as well. I can see how you might think I just read your post out of context and wrote a response -- many people do that on boards like these. But earlier, you stated:

This demonstrates that you clearly prefer the view that it is entirely outside of genetics. And my point was that both extremes -- calling it either completely genetic or completely learned -- is an oversight (a very simple point) because we don't understand the genetics enough. Thus, I still find that arguing genetics is useless for our purposes.

Perhaps you don't actually believe what you wrote, or maybe you merely misstated your case. But if you recognize that you don't believe it, and yet you still use the argument (which you don't believe in), you are doing a disservice to the argument.


Getting back to the debate at hand, I think we all know that people can change their accents (by will or not). Some have an easier time than others. But does the fact that accents can be changed mean that we can force people to change their accents?

This is central to our debate. If we can force people to change their accents, and people don't like the gay "lisp", then by all means, we should force people to get rid of it. If not, then we should learn to live with it.

Are you actually defending the possibility of a genetic factor that determines a regional accent?

 

[D_Tintagel_Demondong]

Since many gay men have a lisp and, no matter how hard they try, can't get rid of it, I can only assume that gay men have a genetic propensity to lisp.

 

[heist]

Are you actually defending the possibility of a genetic factor that determines a regional accent?

To categorically say it can't happen is arrogant. Unless you are saying that you know enough about genetics to make the claim that it can't.

To illustrate a possible situation where there might be a "genetic" regional accent, say there is a gene that affects your ability to use all surfaces of your tongue -- say, it makes it very difficult to move just the back-most part of your tongue. This would eliminate "k" (and "g") sounds. Say that this trait is spread throughout an isolated region, since the people living there came from a single group that migrated there ages ago. Thus, all the people there speak with what would appear, to a casual observer, to be a classical "regional accent." However, there is a genetic component to the accent for the natives to the region. And naturally, if outsiders came to live in this isolated region, they could adopt that accent by dropping their "k"s. But if the natives were to try to learn a language that requires the usage of "k"s, they wouldn't be able to pronounce them.

Basically, all I'm saying is that we don't know enough, and so to "call it" one way or the other is kind of silly. But I do support the idea that most (i.e., classical) regional accents are based in cultural history, not genetics. I just don't support the idea that genetics necessarily has absolutely nothing to do with accent.

(Thanks for being patient with this discussion -- most people wouldn't let me get this far!)

 

[dolfette]

i wouldn't think accent could be genentic.
but the shape of your mouth is, and could cause a diffrence in the pronunciation of some words...like a lisp.
and voice pitch is partly genetic too.

 

[BiggerInTexas8]

They are called queens and most gay men are not femme swishy queens.

 

[vince]

I think that a genetic factor in regional accents would be extremely rare if not nil. Look at all the examples of people of different ancestry raised in other places that have no trace of the accent of their native land. People of Chinese extraction born and raised in the US or Canada have no hint of an Oriental accent unless their Grandmothers raised them. Urban African-Americans have distinctive accents which are easily identified is coming from the US. Yet raise that same person in Britain, and they'll have as thick an English accent as a person whose family has lived there for hundreds of years.

Genetic changes in humans don't happen very fast. It takes many generations of any significant changes to occur.

As far as a gay lisp goes.. come on. We are still debating the whole nature vs nurture aspect of homosexuality, much leth whether or not a small minority of gay guys affect a lisp. It's either a conscious or unconscious habitual speech pattern picked up for any number of reasons. It could be to fit in to a group, to be outrageous, or whatever. Same is any other speech habit.

Also, in my opinion, there is a difference between a man who has a feminine way of speaking and a gay man that speaks with a lisp. Although one does preclude the other, I would think that feminine speech patterns are less likely to be an affectation than a lisp.

 

[D_Tintagel_Demondong]

I have formally studied regional dialectology for over four years, and informally throughout my travels, and I am not aware of this "genetic factor".

I hope that nobody uses the old Castilian Spanish argument.

 

[vince]

Oh thop it. You thilly recth..

 

[heist]

I have formally studied regional dialectology for over four years, and informally throughout my travels, and I am not aware of this "genetic factor".

Well, that makes sense. Dialectology (and even linguistics in general) probably wouldn't approach the subject from a point of view that would make "genetic factors" significant enough to study. And certainly, it wouldn't be a strong "force" -- as I noted earlier, it doesn't make sense that it would affect regions larger than a small isolated group.

Incidentally, what exactly is the "old Castilian Spanish" argument? I've heard various forms of it, but I can't see how it would apply to a "genetic factor" -- after all, even if the supposed king had the supposed accent, the supposed passing of it through the people would have been a cultural inheritance, not genetic.

Or maybe he mutated everyone in just the right way so their language-producing organs spontaneously reformed without killing them. And made the change inheritable.

 

[heist]

I think that a genetic factor in regional accents would be extremely rare if not nil. Look at all the examples of people of different ancestry raised in other places that have no trace of the accent of their native land. People of Chinese extraction born and raised in the US or Canada have no hint of an Oriental accent unless their Grandmothers raised them. Urban African-Americans have distinctive accents which are easily identified is coming from the US. Yet raise that same person in Britain, and they'll have as thick an English accent as a person whose family has lived there for hundreds of years.

Vince, in general, I agree with you. However, you are still coming very close to making overstepping generalizations. What if there is a gene that affects one's ability to retroflex their tongue? In Japan, no one would notice -- Japanese doesn't use a retroflexed "r", but rather the combined "r-l" (like the rolled Spanish "r"). If we take a Japanese family with this and have their offspring grow up in the US, we would notice that they still can't pronounce the retroflexed r. And because we haven't transplanted every Japanese person and forced their kids to learn American English as their primary language, how can we take this absence of evidence to necessarily prove that there is no gene that affects retroflex? (Particularly since we've found that the ability to roll your tongue is at least partly genetic?) (Not roll as in Spanish roll!)

Essentially, all I'm saying is that genetic stuff is too unpredictable.


As a final note, you mentioned:

Genetic changes in humans don't happen very fast. It takes many generations of any significant changes to occur.

I always find it interesting that people express the power of genetics (if you will) in terms of "change". If anything, I would say genetics' abilities come from "numbers". It's because bacteria are so populous that we have problems with antibiotic resistance, not from their ability to "change". Lucky genetics has more to do with a particular bacterium's survival than its so-called ability to adapt, and luck requires high numbers for the low probability to result in success.
(Not that this is important in any significant way. Particularly for our discussion.)

(As a final final note, I loved your phrase "of Chinese extraction". Such wonderful imagery I see.)

 

[earllogjam]

I don't think the gay lisp is a genetic phenomenon. It is simply men who take on the speech patterns of feminine speech patterns in their respective society. Drag queens have this lisp and speech pattern as to many many gay men. Even though they have male deep voices - their intonations and emphasis on certain syllables and sentence endings are characteristic of feminine speech in society. Some boys identify more with females and take on their mannerisms including female speech patterns.

The gay lisp occurs in all languages simply because there are male and female ways of speaking in all languages.

OMG whattever...(rolls eyes to back of head then hair flip)