Prevalence of vocal fry in young adult male American English speakers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess possible gender differences in the prevalence of vocal fry in the voices of young male college students. Results were compared with previously published findings derived from a matched sample of female speakers. Thirty-four male college students, native American English speakers, produced speech samples in two speaking conditions: (1) sustained isolated vowel /a/ and (2) reading task. Data analyses included perceptual evaluations by two licensed speech-language pathologists. Results showed that vocal fry was perceived significantly more frequently in sentences than in isolated vowel productions. When vocal fry occurred in sentences, it was detected significantly more often in sentence-final position than in initial- and/or mid-sentence position. Furthermore, the prevalence of vocal fry in sentences was significantly lower for male speakers than has previously been reported for female speakers. Possible physiological and sociolinguistic explanations are discussed.

Keywords: Gender differences; Perceptual judgments; Prevalence of vocal fry; Sociolinguistic factors.