Vocal Fry and Upspeak - Kate Kelleher
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- Опубліковано 6 лис 2017
- A voice is a distinctive signature. It can inspire nostalgia, confidence or havoc depending on its pitch, intensity, and quality. Recently, women on radio have been receiving criticism for the sound of their voice. Some listeners are making condescending remarks about speech patterns that may be signs of gender shifts and access in the radio world. Is it generational? Is it a lack of formality and disrespect? You decide!
PechaKucha Night Asheville vol 13
November 18, 2016
NPR is upspeak and vocal fry central!
@B0omer96 it used to be worth something waaaaay back. It’s rotten from the inside out with “donations”
@B0omer96 yeah I loved them in the 90’s. Pretty sad.
Correct. The overall tone used by most speakers on NPR is so thoroughly obnoxious that I cannot stand even 2 minutes of it. One could write a book about all the psychological reasons behind this, but I think the main thing is their innate sense of superiority, pride in the sureness that their ideas (not Yours!) are so correct, and their pervasive sense that they are "holier than thou". I consider all of NPR speakers to be phony, tendentious, and obnoxious beyond words.
That’s bc they’re never confident about what they say .
@@ashsnipe It's virtuous to not know what you're, you know, talking about?
Don Draper & Darth Vader have the only acceptable forms of vocal fry 😁
She has mild vocal fry!
I feel like she’s consciously trying to limit her upspeak
So glad to see people telling others that speaking this way, by making everything sound like a question, makes them sound like idiots. Thank you for this.
Really
So glad to see comments showing that people haven't understood the video, makes them sound like idiots.
Speaking like idiots it's not because of age but social complex
@@acamontotally.
Yes, really. These are affectations that are turnoffs.@@user-hr8pz6lh5w
When someone talks to me with up speak, making everything sound like a question, I tell them if they want the conversation to continue they will need to knock it off.
I can remember specifically the first time I heard someone speak with upspeak. It sounded absolutely bizarre. I first heard it back in the late 60's when beauty pageant contestants were being interviewed.
Sadly today you can hear it in post doctoral dissertations too.
Vocal fry sounds pompous. Upspeak and "like" sounds unintelligent.
@@Rollwithit699 --There 's a few more of these more recent --and somewhat amusing in daily speech quirks, that I have identified --AND have been given a label!
One of them is "An Ohhh Quoter"
@@casparuskruger4807 What's that? Can you describe? Thanks.
It's funny how she still does the vocal fry and the uptalk thing in every other sentence.
I guess there's no coming back from it in the US
We're done for!
I absolutely LOVE this presentation. News anchors, Women in positions of authority have mistakenly fallen into this pattern. It has became so annoying to me, i sought out this discussion, yours is the best explanation i've seen. Several comedy routines have also provided good insights.
I'm literally surrounded by mid 20's to early 30's women at work. They ALL talk with fry and uptalk. I swear they try to out-fry each other. Honestly, it makes me want to set them on fire.
Edit: It's intern time. My dept is one huge growl-a-thon now. Girls and guys. 100% Growling. 100% of the time. Kid behind me has it turned up to 11.
Good lord you are in hell. I really feel for you. Thankfully it's not yet speeding to my country.
Do they say literally too?
@@tpink3792 They ACTUALLY do!
Heaven help you!
All that fry must sound like a motorbike passing 😂😂😂
As long as changing the station is an option, uptalk all you want, but about three minutes of it is all I can take, so after that, I won't be hearing it.
There is a guy at my work that speaks with THE MOST HORRENDOUS FRY. You couldn't find somebody with a worse fry.
This woman has vocal fry
They often use a list of uptalks, eg a bundle of options, a list of possibilities etc, and each time one is rattled off the tone at the end of the item drops down to exactly the same pitch. On visits to America I've found that it became obligatory at about the same time as answering a question with "I wanna say...", and about three years before starting EVERY fucking sentence with "So, ....".
@B0omer96 That's a strange one. It's really unfortunate that we have had easy recourse to false gnashers for hundreds of years, and it has always been an object of derision not to have your own teeth. This is making many Europeans rather slow in having their gobs prettied-up a bit. Hopefully as orthodontics improve they will work out how to make teeth look vaguely natural. My grandad was an orthodontist in the early 1900s and I still have some of his samples. He went to immense trouble to avoid the polished marble look, using tints and slight re-setting of false choppers to avoid that cheap, factory finish so beloved of Beverly Hills gob vandals.
When my mum was a little lass her dad, an orthodontist, bought out some bankrupt stock from a defunct tooth factory, and with the entire family helping to count them all they found they had over 1,000,000 false teeth. I think eventually they used them as the sub-base for Grandad's new garage floor.
@B0omer96 Have you managed to avoid the twin affectations of "So, .. and "I wanna say..."? Don't be offended by the way, the British have hundreds of such sillinesses!
Yes, it makes everything they say sound trivial. No gravitas to speak of tragic or serious events, as we see in many newscasters. They seem disconnected from the meaning of their teleprompter words. They keep smiling.
How about starting every sentence with so?
Hearing that right through the past year of covid interviews has all but killed me.
@burteriksson oh and there's literally rearing its ugly head. Let's go for the trifecta and say he's sort of underrated.
@burteriksson And toss in a "with that being said" every 4th sentence
Just as bad as vocal fry and upspeak.
Women walking around like creacking Kardashian replicas, all sounding the same and all sounding like obnoxious 14 year olds with a vocal damage...is not a good thing. Just annoying and sad. It is learned behavior too, nothing natural about having a constant vocal fry.
all language is learned behavior.
Exactly
As an Australian, I have to defend the upspeak a little as it is part of our intonation. The Australian accent does that but if I could charge a penny for every time I hear an American who says "like" in the wrong way, I'm like going to be totally rich!
loik? umm doin't paitrinize moye?
I’m Australian and I don’t notice any upspeak except in young people emulating/mocking American UA-camrs... I’ll have to listen for it more.
No it's not the Australian accent that does it. It's actually relatively new to Australia. My parents' generation (or even mine) didn't do it. Australians do it more than any other country it seems. (I'm over 40 btw. Dang it I'm over 50!)
Yes, "like" out of context is akin to fingernails on a chalkboard. Most young people don't know what a chalkboard is any more.
@@jimbarrofficial Americans have been saying like since Maynard G. Krebs
This would be better if it had video clips with sound?
For the most part, I agree?
A little upspeak anyone?
Good observation Michael?
NPR finally did cover this again late June '22.
More and more these days the amount of Vocal Fry from the women is getting MUCH WORSE!
And you can't unhear it! STOP IT NPR!
I just listened to a lady on an Ezra Klein podcast and this woman was sounding so raspy, It was extremely distracting, but I didn't know what it was until I noticed a yuotube commenter mentioning it on an unrelated podcast.
i love diane reems, i really thought she actually was 90!!!
in the 50s and 60s my dad, a fireman, told me women were the first choice as dispatchers in fire and ambulance as well as police because they have clear voices, i would think vocal fry is a deterrent to those positions
as for upspeak, it makes the person sound uncertain
My mom always said that Diane Rheam sounded like Larry Mendello's mother (see "Leave It to Beaver").
Upspeak is one of the most unbecoming characteristics of the millennial generation. Speak with confidence, authority, and end sentences with "."s versus "?"s
And men do it, too. It's not just women.
The Upspeak is a way of asking a question in UK. Today is Friday with upspeak is a question. Fry tones is just nasty.
Ironically as a guy i tend to upspeak when I’m feeling the most confident and comfortable. And i speak with a drop tone (which is associated with confidence and command) when I’m feeling the least confident and insecure.
@@SL-pg4dh Its not about confidence.. but acceptance.. you are upspeaking at your best because it is the time your mind decides is a good moment to ask for consensus.
I had no clue why there were voices that drove me insane. My know-it-all ex husband told me I was the crazy one...that no one else heard voices as being annoying. I am relieved to know it isnt just me, and that that there really was a noticeable difference in voices that could jar your senses.
It's a sign of wanting to be spoiled. It's shallow, pretentious, insecure, ignorant and is indicative of our materialistic rot as a society.
🎉🎉🎉exactly its an affected form of speaking - as soon as I hear it l 'switch' off from the talker or ask them if they need some water.😂
In Australia, people in Queensland speak with upspeak. The rest of Australia is more normal
I’m glad someone is talking about this; however, I’m not sure what her conclusion meant-she stated that vocal fry & uptalk is shared and used mostly by young women, and also men, to feel a part of the group. She also said that fry is bad for the vocal chords. I have felt this has been a trend for years in order to feel cool or hip, but we never needed it before. What happens now, and does this continue until something else takes its place, or will everyone just continue to sound like a Valley Girl?
sounds to me she was advocating it. which is stupid...sounds horrible and the fry one can damage your vocal cords.
Her argument really lame by try to mix the overuse one with the normal one. The one that I really annoy is unnatural that make a person look like they are pretending or mimic some manner that they think it look cool to them.
Vocal fry in some women is somewhat similar to men who are cocky (not a men who use it since most men do vocal fry in natural way, they born with lower tone.) But the cocky boy and vocal fry girl are the same since they both try to look cool to the other and pretending it that long until it becomes their habit.
@@hypermark9909 Just like you're doing. 😁
Exactly. The sorority leaders are a certain thing, which is not necessarily a healthy kind of leadership. They can validate materialism, meanness, and cruelty. That's a certain kind of authority, and how scary.@@hypermark9909
It's bad enough to make mistakes or to have bad habits, but we now live in a world where it's commonplace (accepted, encouraged even) to rationalize those negatives in some BS defensive rant.
Diane Rehm isn't a reanimated mummy? Seeing people from radio is always a shock, but this one takes the cake. I haven't listened to NPR in decades and I thought she had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, back then. The thing I noticed most about NPR voices is the ones playing music always had their mics too hot and you could hear every smack of their lips and the moisture in their mouths with every syllable.
I'm squirming in sympathy.
Gawd I hate that sound.
"how to spot a lying control freak", should be the title..
How do I deal with a coworker that does vocal fry? I am sorry but I can’t stand her! I don’t know what to do please help!
I think it is important to always look at our own biases and how that is impacting the judgments we make about other people. Is it a generational difference? Is it a misophonia? Even things that sound cacophonous at one time can be assimilated to sound tolerable. I invite you to look at your co-worker's speaking style from a different perspective.
Luis Nunes How do you deal with a coworker that happens to be blonde, or has a high-pitched voice, or has some disability? How on earth do you deal with diversity in your life?
acondorip How do you deal with people who thinks different than you?
You might not get annoyed by someone who does vocal fry, well good for you! But guess what, I do! What’s your concept of diversity then?
Paddlesandknits no thank you 😏
Make her a mouthwatering knuckle sandwich.
*Question:* Males vs females.
Are one of them more likely than the other to uptalk?
If so ... why?
So...I get to listen to a talk by a speech expert, who starts every second sentence with "So..."
Just as annoying as upspeak.
Graham L She honestly sounds kinda dumb herself.
Doesn't bother me. "So" at the beginning of a sentence is the new "Well". It just means "Listen up, here comes my statement".
yes, yes, yes
I will take the "So" anyday over fry,uptalk for sure
Vocal Fry and Upspeak are reasons why older adults can't take Millenial Women seriously. To me its like fingernails on a blackboard.
i recently tried listening to a guided meditation in which the speaker used excessive uptalk and IiIfound it very distracting
Also the way they pronounce certain vowels esp. short A. For example, in "that" the "a" sounds almost like "thot". I never heard anyone talk this way until a few years ago then suddenly many younger women are. WTF is happening?
@Robert G. Thank you for replying. You're the first to corroborate what I've been hearing. I know I'm not imagining it because I hear it often.
I notice that too. They quack out their vowels. I hate it. And it's not just the girls and younger women doing it.
Kate Kellerher talks in vocal fry as well.
I don’t even want to know these terms exist. It’s not a good thing.
Before going down the path of rationalizing your tortured feelings about others' vocal tones by convincing yourself that you are only trying to "help" these folks from harming and demeaning themselves, please consider examining your own attitudes and whether you are approaching this "societal issue" (and/or just your emotional reaction to others' tones) from a position of understanding and compassion.
I have no problem understanding people who use upspeak or "over-use" vocal fry. I don't like the way they sound, but I don't declare them to be objectively "unprofessional" or "immature". I think of it this way - learning to understand vocal tone trends is similar to learning to understand foreign accents. It improves my ability to understand more people, and makes my brain work to adapt, which is a good thing. If there is something truly wrong or dangerous about a vocal trend, it will most likely correct itself with time, and does not need the active intervention of TED talks and vocal coach youtubers legitimizing overreactions to vocal trends -- these trends will always be changing, and will always be with us. I believe an important aspect of life is learning to be compassionate and understanding in all contexts.
Did NPR bankroll this?
Speech on fry using fry.. We're doomed!
I use it when mocking a Karen situation. for example "that's racist" or "I feel that..."
4:40 I'm surprised the presenter didn't pick up on the association and culture of the two groups she used for examples of instances where upspeak is common. In sororities (groups of women in general) and some Asian cultures people use upspeak as a means to build consensus - and that's what upspeak is all about...not making statements, but building consensus.
It's annoying to some of us because we often want to know the upspeaker's definitive point of view or stance, not be faced with a non-committal pseudo-question. Upspeak often comes off as unctuous, in an Eddie Haskell way, insincere and duplicitous.
Kate, your own sentences always end in vocal fry...
@NPC -30 it's always forced. You are just used to it.
I noticed that too!
Nah, I will keep judging people for it.
I'm 30 and English is my second language. I saw the shift happening right in front of my eyes and people MY AGE who started using it without even realizing they'd been infected. Awful. Uptalk doubly so because I have perfect pitch.
The irony is that this woman has a mild case of vocal fry herself, and she uses the recent social phenomenon of using the word "so" to begin a sentence when it's not a continuation of the previous sentence.
It seems that “old money” women use vocal fry too.
Has anyone noticed how quickly young people speak nowadays? The server will introduce themselves in a restaurant or you’ll call a place of business and you can’t understand them because they’re mumbling and speaking to fast. I guess times are changing.
Also when they end a sentence with “...so, yeah.”
Very informative presentation!
How fucki no fourthlp
She has an auditory crush on Kai Ryssdal, has she ever seen him?!? The man is 😍😍😍
I’ve seen a lot of Americans and Canadians using uptalk.
Yes, its a shame that so many Americans choose to sound so dumb and unsure of themselves.
Pecha Cucha?
the category of this vid says: Nonprofits & Activism. lol, sounds about right.
I liked your presentation but I have to tell you that you very often have the vocal fry habit creeping in to your own delivery. Hmmm.
She does the uptalk thing too.
@@Pablo123456x Since she is in this field, it might serve her well to record herself so she can see exactly what she is doing and therefore become more aware. I'd also be happy to offer her some voice coaching to help her with some of these habits.
NPR... says it all...
You don't have to say thank you before you exit. That's quite alright.
Go to Vox's video about the myth of races, and brace yourself. It's simply unbearable to listen to.
Ingrima Or any watchmojo video
I went and listen. You're right, unbearable.
In more ways than one!
Five years later and it's ten times worse.
Is this real? It’s a fashion voice. Period.
Valley Girl
I thought this was going to be a demo of death metal vocal fry screaming. My mistake. So yeah, ... So ... yeah.
It seems to me to be an American habit. I may be wrong but l haven't heard any people besides Americans do it
Are we allowed to identify their gender again? Sweet (with vocal fry).
Not a fan,heard it this morning by a woman reporting on NPR while getting my corona virus updates
NPR is almost unbearable these days. Everyone is a victim (i.e., women, minorities) , and yes, vocal fry sounds pretentious. NPR clearly has an agenda. Sad.
this is extremely unscientific, and a lame excuse to keep frying, even the presenter herself is doing it
No we don’t all make those ridiculous vocal fry sounds as she’s chosen to assert,, and vocal fry is NOT the deep note in our voices,, why has she chosen to lie about this.....--??
This Lady is absolutely correct. Vocal fry and upspeak is probably the worst way to talk ever!!!
Ever since I was made aware of it. It helps me filter out a lot of videos and cut down on social media. The way it sounds is so unappealing that I can click off and bless my ears for sparing them; the ear rape.
While upspeak and vocal fry are really annoying, they are tolerable. What is intolerable is ridiculous logistical gymnastics like those used by this idiot in the video making lame excuses about vocal cords and the like. People speak like this because they hear others speak like this and end up mimicking the speech pattern because they find it popular, or clever, or whatever. It began with teenaged girls in the 1980s and now has spread to virtually everyone under the age of 50. This is from a linguistic expert quoted in The New York Times Magazine:
"Deborah Tannen -- a linguist at Georgetown, who, with her book "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation," may have overtaken Noam Chomsky and become the best-known linguist in America -- contends that broad theorizing about uptalk is downright foolish. Speech patterns are contagious, she says, and they spread the way fads do. "There's a fundamental human impulse to imitate what we hear," she says. "Teen-agers talk this way because other teen-agers talk this way and they want to sound like their peers."
Totally agree with you. Her argument really lame by try to mix the overuse one with the normal one. The one that I really annoy is unnatural that make a person look like they are pretending or mimic some manner that they think it look cool to them.
Vocal fry in some women is somewhat similar to men who are cocky (not a men who use it since most men do vocal fry in natural way, they born with lower tone.) But the cocky boy and vocal fry girl are the same since they both try to look cool to the other and pretending it that long until it becomes their habit.
That's exactly what she's saying too. Not sure why you need to be so insulting?
I am blaming Kardashian
I'm not sure where this lecture got off the bus, but it seemed abrupt. I turn off any station featuring an up speaker. It's attention-seeking and it keeps it from being about communication and the audience. I miss professional voices. The world shouldn't sound like one endless self-involved Moth story, requiring the a great amount of work on the listener's part. Combined with a strange audio effect on my radios, it's exacerbated by some kind of tinny compression or something. Unbearable. When I turn the channel that all changes.
Up-speak and vocal fry combined means you are extremely intelligent and progressive. I could never freaking stand Ira Glass's voice. So annoying!
I came here because I'm studying this topic, and I just have some questions:
Why would anyone be annoyed by either vocal fry or upspeak? Okay, yes, you can tell it's there (if you pay close attention), but why would it annoy anyone?
Next, why do some people think it's a way of trying to mask dumbness? It's literally just a speech pattern that not everyone can control. Yes, of course many of the people that use it have been, let's say "inspired" by pop culture icons, but *why does it bother you?* It's like if you were bothered by someone pronouncing the letter "s" a little more "whistled". How does it affect you? There's absolutely no need to criticise women (or anyone at all) for using it when it's part of their NORMAL way of speaking.
I wish I knew this also!
It almost seems like cilantro - how people have very different reactions to it, including those who are viscerally repulsed by it.
Or maybe this mostly boils down to misogyny.
@@jay-hill I'm a woman, and I despise the vocal fry and the nasal speaking.
@@Me-lb8nd It sounds like you believe misogyny to be the exclusive domain of men.
Regardless, I expect that there is also a directional, generational component to these strong reactions.
. “ according to public speaking coach Diane DiResta, …people should avoid uptalk because it makes the speaker sound tentative… halting speech can undermine your authority, making it sound as if you are not sure about the facts you present.”
I would argue it goes against traditional education in the use of verbal grammar and intonation. That’s likely why so many tend to get annoyed by it. It sounds like the speaker is trying to BS their way through a topic or conversation or portray themselves as smarter than they are or than whoever they’re speaking too.
Funny... I have NEVER heard anything from a Kardashian, and have never seen anything except the occasional still photo of any Kardashian.
Its not a gender thing. It's for attention
Why does she need to attack men here?
She's a feminist. The funny thing is that she's wrong. Young women outearn young men but she's too dumb to know that.
There is no such a thing in Spanish. I've only heard the fry voice and the question intonation in the English language. If I spoke like that in Spanish, people would laugh.
Lol wrong. Then you never heard the Finnish language
That's because Spanish is fundamentally different from English. It's monotone and syllabic. You simply can't speak Spanish with English intonation without sounding unnatural and ridiculous 😂
@@greggrachen5633 certainly not and I would like it! :)
@@microbios8586 It's very common for people to adopt idioms that come from the United States. I hope that's never the case!
She basically said nothing for 7 minutes. I feel dumber for having endured this.
Agreeee, I'm turning it off. Lameeee
Well idk, I don't have any hatred upon uptalking. It's sometimes rather cute(SOMEtimes).
But vocal fry sounds really lazy as hell as if the person wants to just quit and go to bed.
It makes me very annoyed.
3:06 You mean she's *not* 90?
Vocal fry makes people sound tired. Very unpleasant.
Both make me cringe.. Place a „like“ to that and it’s even worse.
Why is the goal for women to sound authoritative or confident? How about just sounding feminine?
Huh?
That's a broken organ.
She loves NPR?? Those pretentious creeps have the most annoying voices of all.
Astonishing, so many hateful comments for a simple talk. There is nothing else as annoying. I'd like to hear the hateful critics give a talk....no, I wouldn't.
I absolutely don't care if it's trendy, and all the cool people do it, vocal fry, up speaking and any type of speaking that is the "In Thing" to do makes a person sound ignorant, lazy and stupid. Not to mention they appear to be brown nosing sheep.
Exactly.
How about some actual examples? Jeezus.
it's a weird term: "vocal fry"...it's more like a croak and it's incredibly annoying, moreso than the airheaded rising inflection at the end of every statement, which truly does make the speaker sound rather light in the IQ dept and simply lack credibility
I loathe NPR, and vocal fry.
This presentation is poorly done, sorry. There are some good factoids, but strung together haphazardly. Namely, talking about vocal fry and uptalk interchangeably from one moment to the next, when whey are distinctly different things.
Vocal Fry- "also referred to as popcorning, or creaking"
Actually, it's called twat growl.
Makes women sound uneducated, disingenuous, and lazy. Makes men sound the same way, despite its origins supposedly in upper crust circles.
Not advisable to use it in the workplace.
Funny also that it is improperly used as a subject for leverage for gender equality in the workplace.
When women resort to this vocal "technique", they generally sound like an unintelligent 14 year old in a food court in San Bernardino in 1981 ordering a slice of pizza.
What a joke this presenter is, like clueless - practice what you preach
What are you basing that on? I think her talking points were spot on and articulate.
She is practicing what she’s preaching. She said that successful women use it.
All the people in the comments telling women how to speak... please just stop.
YES!
Ugh, thank you.
By all means keep talking like this because it's clear everyone else loves it.
Are you feeling the toxic masculinity? Good
Upspeak is all you hear at woke seminars and panel discussions. So bizarre. And annoying.
I heard a female doctor being interviewed on NPR recently. Her upspeak and liberal use of "so" and "like" were so damn irritating. I couldn't take anything she said seriously!
Men, women...you left out soooo many other genders.
Vocal fry is sometimes cool, but uptalking, hell no, that’s just annoying
To prove what a phony fad it is, please recall that in the past no one used to speak like this. It is very obnoxious like so many other recent fads.
Get to the point.
Incredible annoying.