An Investigation into the Types of Adjectives Used to Label Voice

Abstract

Studies have explored the differences in adjectives used to describe men and women, as well as how adjective polarity changes depending upon the context in which it is used. This research has not been applied to the types of adjectives used to label voice and the distribution of these adjectives across gender and polarity within a selected typology. In this paper, adjectives used to label voice are examined to evaluate whether the use of these adjectives reflects gender stereotypes, as well as the distribution of these adjectives across polarity and gender within a typology. Using the supersense taxonomy developed by Tsvetkov et al. (2014), 171 adjectives were individually placed into one of the thirteen supersenses. Six of these supersenses, containing 98.4% of the female and male contextual entries, were further analyzed to determine if stereotypes were reflected in the collected data. Upon analyzing the individual adjectives within each supersense, both male and female stereotypes were found to be present when labeling voice.