[NT!]

[ QUOTE ]
also ur a hipocrite for making fun and then giving a star, but ur a damn funny one.

[/ QUOTE ]

i'd be a hypocrite if i locked the thread for being offensive and made a comment like that.

the reason i locked the thread was because i didn't think the discussion was going anywhere productive, i thought good samaritan had some very foolish ideas about the linguistic / sociological origins and significance of 'the lisp,' and i thought it was more suited to one of several other forums.

unfortunately i don't think there is much we can do with this topic in any forum, and here's why.

first, there has been very little actual linguistic research on this issue.

second, anyone familiar with principles of research in the social sciences can see that the studies produced so far have a number of flaws in design and lack the kind of specificity and breadth of data to really make them even potentially useful. not to say that they shouldn't be done, or should be ignored completely, but they represent baby steps, nothing more. for one, there is a high element of 'performance' to language and most people have a fair degree of variance in their speech patterns depending on the audience and the subject matter. linguists studying regional and cultural dialects usually have to immerse themselves in it for extended periods to gather the kind of data a really in-depth analysis of this phenomenon would require.

while some of the very rough data presented so far seems to suggest that there might be some plausibility to an identifiable 'gay dialect' of sorts, and that it might include certain 'feminized' speech patterns and intonations, i think we're a long way from quantifying it beyond that. for one, does it exist in other languages? does it have characteristics common to all languages or does it vary between them? for instance, in one of the studies linked in the OP it notes that the pronounced asibilation observed in stereotypically gay american men is common in several other dialects or languages as well. do gay speakers of those languages exhibit even more pronounced asibilation, or is the dialect different in french, spanish, etc.

what makes this notion different from other dialects is that anecdotal evidence would seem to indicate that it may exist across other linguistic borders???? i don't know if anyone has ever studied something like feminized speech in different languages, and whether its traits carry over, but that might be a place to start.

for these and other reasons, i suspect that the discussion, if it picks up any steam, will be largely anecdotal from this point on.