There’s also a competing possibility that there are complaints about both genders but only one class of complaints draws enough ire to buoy it above the threshold of getting noticed.
Yeah, it’s upspeak, but unlike fry, where you can at least appreciate that someone’s maybe taking the time to think without going ‘um, uh, errrr’, upspeak strongly projects lack of confidence (and by implication, competence). If we don’t know the people well and we’ve got one person saying ‘This won’t work.’ and the other person saying ‘This should work? Because it’s probably? Not too different from X? Which works?’ then in the absence of deeper knowledge we’re going with the first person, instead of the second person who apparently isn’t even sure X works, much less Y.
Yes, I know, you should only judge on results and explore everything completely etc etc but given lack of time and attention going with the person who sounds assured is one of those efficiency things that people do (even when it’s disastrous, like Dubya as president). As an easy example, I see people with fry getting promoted a lot more than people with upspeak. We’ve got several managers and execs who fry, but none who upspeak. It’s not harmless.
I don’t think people should voice their vowels. Vibrating the vocal cords when pronouncing a vowel is just trashy, and no one will take you seriously. It’s stronger not to voice vowels.
That is exactly as stupid as the suggestion that a particular dialect abandon a particular feature of that dialect. Exactly as stupid.
Sorry, pissed off linguist here.
7 Likes
This sort of “women as monolith” idea is endemic… so much so that men even comment on it from time to time…
9 Likes
I have a theory that vocal fry is also indicative of insecurity, at least for some of them…
(I work at a public university, I hear a lot of it!)
If I have to ask a “fryer” to repeat something they said when they do they get lower and “fry-ier” and harder to understand. Its really weird to witness. Like asking someone “can you repeat that I didn’t hear it” and they say it again but quieter.
1 Like
Question: Which is more annoying, vocal fry or up talk? 
Trick question!
Because the answer is when both are done at the same time!
3 Likes
Tonal music is just a subset of atonal music. #Allnotesmatter
3 Likes
No notes! No more than one cycle of any waveform. Periodicity is a crutch!
Complaints about either of them
I don’t see why you would have many or any execs that speak that way. Up-speak is generally attributed to young women whereas fry, despite what Wolf thinks, spans age brackets & is usually completely accepted or ignored in males anyway. When up-speak is found in males it gets the same treatment as fry too, ignored or accepted.
That’s where criticism of up-speak failed altogether, and in my opinion why Wolf’s criticism fails in this instance, because she singles out young women. She does so with a laudable goal in mind I believe, but policing most anything in youth is most often foolhardy, policing speech always is, generation after generation, whether it’s vocabulary, grammar, disfluencies, or in the case of up-speak, accent features.
Not only does it not work, it’s often degrading no matter the intention.
3 Likes
Perhaps, but if she does after putting all that effort into this, surely someone who can’t even spell her name right or come up more than eight words’ worth of argument definitely needs to shut the fuck up.
But thanks. Fixed the typo.
1 Like
So THAT is what it’s called when singers do that!
It grates on me to no end - almost like nails on chalkboard. It makes Britney Spears even more unlistenable.
What’s worse? Is the now firmly established pattern? Of ending each sentence with a rising inflection?
Like every thing you say? Is in the form a question?
Just combine that with a singsongy inflection and you’ll have a sure fire recipe for misery.
First they came for the upspeak, but I didn’t say anything as my people are not from the valley.
Then they came for the fry, but I didn’t say anything as I am not a Kardashian…
3 Likes
The “Feminism made the complaints about women famous” possibility. That had not occurred to us, Dude.
Uh, okay, ya know, you guys aren’t privy to all the new shit, so uh, you know, but hey, that’s what you, that’s what you pay me for.
Brandt, give him the envelope.
Hey! All voices matter you know!
Naomi Wolf seems to want a lot of thi-i-ings.
3 Likes
