{"id":8061,"date":"2019-04-03T18:44:59","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T22:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2019\/04\/05\/furman-alum-studies-what-listeners-perceive-as-gay-speech\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T18:41:53","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T23:41:53","slug":"furman-alum-studies-what-listeners-perceive-as-gay-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-alum-studies-what-listeners-perceive-as-gay-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman alum studies what listeners perceive as ‘gay speech’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Travis Evans-Sago \u201909 knew as soon as he started speaking in McEachern Lecture Hall many people in the audience would rightly conclude he\u2019s gay. How they were able to do that was the subject of his recent talk \u201cDo You Hear \u2018Gay?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus was not really on that gay people speak a certain way, because the research shows that we really don\u2019t,\u201d Evans-Sago said. \u201cIt\u2019s what listeners perceive as gay speech that may be more interesting, because across cultures we\u2019re not sure if there is a universal pitch, for example \u2026 It\u2019s not that we hear something differently. It\u2019s that we\u2019re associating different meaning to different parts of speech. A big research question is, ‘What part about that is universal, and what about that is specific to a language or a region or a group of people?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

A capacity crowd of students was on hand to hear the talk by Travis Evans-Sago ’09.<\/p><\/div>\n

Evans-Sago double-majored in Spanish and Asian studies at Furman and is currently completing a Ph.D. program in Hispanic linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington. He became interested in trying to answer that question while living in a bilingual Spanish-French community in France.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke Spanish better than I did French, so I gravitated toward the Spanish people,\u201d he said. \u201cThese bilinguals said, \u2018You know, when you speak Spanish, you speak Spanish like a woman. But when you speak French, you speak French like a man.’ So that got me interested in how I can sound like a woman in one language and sound like a man in another. What do they hear that makes them think that I sound gay in one language and don\u2019t sound gay in another?\u201d<\/p>\n

Evans-Sago, a native of Camden, South Carolina, was asked to discuss his research at Furman by Professor of Asian Studies and History Savita Nair<\/a>, who also moderated the presentation. The talk was sponsored by the Furman Pride Alliance<\/a> and the Asian studies<\/a> and modern languages and literatures<\/a> departments.<\/p>\n

Nair was Evans-Sago\u2019s advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved Furman. It was honestly some of the best years of my life,\u201d said Evans-Sago, who holds a master\u2019s degree in Spanish from Middlebury College and a master\u2019s degree in Hispanic linguistics from IU. \u201cI really learned how to question a lot of the common things that I hear \u2026 My questions started at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evans-Sago\u2019s work has been published in \u201cThe Routledge Handbook of Spanish Language Teaching\u201d and the Journal of Ibero-Romance Creoles. Another message he tried to get across to the students in attendance was the value of and reason for research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m trying to do is show undergraduate students that when we do research we don\u2019t always have it right, but we still research,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we find our questions, and we get better at answering questions. I think that\u2019s the biggest point of my talk, that research isn\u2019t a one-shot deal. It\u2019s piece-by-piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travis Evans-Sago \u201909 knew as soon as he started speaking in McEachern Lecture Hall many people in the audience would rightly conclude he\u2019s gay. How they were able to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,56,70,16,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-asian-studies","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-modern-languages-and-literature","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}