So… I hear that come up as often among talmud-arguing orthodox Jewish men as I do among Californian women.
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A clause final raising intonation is NOT question intonation!
Questions (in most English dialects) can have rising intonation (‘have you returned the book yet?’) or falling intonation (‘where is the book?’). Equally statements can have falling, rising or other intonation patterns. Intonation codes for prosodic and pragmatic categories, not (or at least only very indirectly) syntactic categories like ‘question’.
Oof. The bane of public radio. Always makes the Expert of the Moment sound to me like someone who is uncomfortable with public speaking, and is relying on a memorized precis of background information, rather than actually listening and reacting to the questioner. Grates on me somethin’ fierce.
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First, my abilities to spell or correctly complete paperwork have no bearing on the fact that the sample size of the study is so small as to make the information essentially anecdotal. Second, if uptalk in males is on the rise in Southern California as part of a trend that also is being seen in New Zealand, Australia and London it is, in fact making reference to tens of millions of males who speak English. Third, since standard use of English is, for you, the prime determinant of competence, I have taken the liberty of correcting the grammatical, vocabulary and punctuation errors in the bracketed section of your comment. “[Please note that the last sentence is to be pronounced with a rise at the end and uttered with a nekkid dance too. Also note that your admonitions to not feed the trolls are too late, so save your pixels.]”
See also: Snark.
As for your “tens of millions,” maybe you’re taking a page from the books of Tea Party marchers or something. From the article quote I provided:
...an effect similar to findings of uptalk in other English dialects, including New Zealand, Australian and London English (Warren, 2005; Ainsworth, 2004; Daly and Warren, 2001; Fletcher, Grabe, and Warren, 2005; Barry, 2007).Also, as the paper was published by the Acoustical Society of America in their "Lay Language Papers" section, you'll note the information they provided on the index page:
The following are lay language versions of meeting papers being presented at the 166th Annual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America to be held December 2-6, 2013, in San Francisco, California. Please keep in mind that some of the research described in the lay papers may not have yet been peer reviewed.Finally, you'll also understand that the Acoustical Society of America's journal is peer reviewed, which seems to indicate that BoingBoing's Maggie might actually post worthwhile stuff.
Good idea, but Facebook will sue you into oblivion.
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