Now, however, preliminary data from a small study presented here last week at the biannual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) show that young boys who don't identify with their assigned gender use 'th'-like pronunciation at slightly higher rates than their peers who do, although they seem to grow out of that tendency. For decades, popular depictions of gay men have sometimes portrayed them pronouncing the letter 's' as more of a 'th' sound-even though studies have failed to find 'lispier' speech in gay men than in straight men. JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA-The notion of a 'gay lisp'-an offensive stereotype to many people-has been a confusing phenomenon for linguists.
