Intensity of the Reader’s Voice in the Reading Aloud of Fiction: Effects of the Character’s Gender

Abstract

The speaker’s gender is a crucial factor affecting the acoustic features of the voice. One such feature is voice intensity, also known as sound pressure level (SPL). Previous studies have indicated that the female voice may involve lower values of SPL than the male voice. Moreover, there are suggestions that the variability of voice intensity tends to be lower for women than for men as well.

Keywords

• voice intensity
• sound pressure level
• gender in language
• sex in language