RETHINKING THE GENDER AMBIGUOUS PITCH RANGE

Georgia Dacakis

Speech pathologists involved in the management of male-to-female transsexual individuals assess and, where appropriate, modify a range of verbal and non-verbal communication characteristics. The fact remains, however, that voice pitch level is still considered the most salient communication characteristic in the perception of speaker gender identity and therefore, the principle target of therapy.
In theory, the ultimate aim of therapy is to increase the speaker’s pitch level to within the female pitch range. However, for many clients this goal is not achievable and clinicians and clients aim instead for the ‘gender ambiguous range’. The concept gender ambiguous range was introduced in the early 80’s to represent the pitch range 145-165Hz (Oates and Dacakis, 1983). This range was extracted from the published acoustic data which demonstrated the overlap between the female pitch range and the male pitch range - it was later interpreted to represent the pitch level at which speakers could not be confidently identified as either male or female.
This paper presents the findings of three research projects undertaken at La Trobe University, Australia which contribute to the dialogue regarding the extent of the ambiguous gender pitch range and the factors which contribute to perceptions of gender. The paper consolidates this information with recent literature in order to propose a revised definition of the term gender ambiguous pitch range. This definition involves the consideration of listener perceptions which indicate that the gender ambiguous pitch range is far wider than originally believed. Future directions for research in this area will also be presented.

Georgia Dacakis:
Postal address: School of Human Communication Sciences, La Trobe University.
Victoria 3086, Australia. Telephone: + 61 3 9479 1810, Fax: + 61 3 9479 1874
e-mail: G.Dacakis@latrobe.edu.au