Monday, October 7, 2013

The enraging up-voice

Find here, starting at about 52 minutes, a perfect example of what I call up-voice. When I come across such a case, I consider starting a company to administer electric shocks to people who realize they are speaking in a way that does not benefit them.

Or am I being an old fogey, and this is merely a transitioning of our language?

h/t rhhardin

Added: rhhardin says, "It's called a high rising terminal. Valley girls and Canadians."

17 comments:

Methadras said...

No, upvoice implies what I call impudent sarcasm.

Amartel said...

It makes the speaker sound tentative? like the conclusion that they have reached or the point they are making is subject to debate? which they are hoping to preempt? by changing their tone? to distract the listener? from the fact that they're not sure? or maybe they're just insecure? about their conclusion or point? and this is how they convey that insecurity?

Icepick said...

I remember small children doing that back in the day, and now that I'm around small children a lot, thanks to having a three year old daughter, I do hear it from them some.

But it really seemed to start becoming prominent among teens and people in their early 20s about 15 years ago. I noticed it in graduate school with the classes I was teaching.

I also noticed girls in particular saying "just kidding" whenever they made a mistake. That was really annoying. Okay, look, you're learning calculus and it's hard, okay? You don't have to apologize for finding the mistakes and correcting them during office hours and such. Hellfire, even if you miss it on a test, you don't have to apologize to ME about it.

Icepick said...

Vocal fry is something else that has become common in recent years. I hear tell that Britney Spears helped popularize THAT, but I don't really know or care about Britney Spears save what I see on the covers of the tabloids at the check out line.

ndspinelli said...

Up speak was started by the old feminist women and it has become part of liberal dialect, male/female. It is helpful in quickly identifying someone who's speaking, but maddening. Another part of the liberal dialect is the quick and assertive, "ah,ah ah,ah," between sentences.

ndspinelli said...

I don't listen to music when I walk. When I walk the beach in San Diego I'll hear conversations of people walking the same pace behind me. Two young women were behind me, I decided to count the number of "like" I heard. In 1 mile, 15 minutes, I counted 342.

Chip Ahoy said...

Is that the thing that sounds Australian? Annoying sounding like a declarative issued as interrogative.

deborah said...

Now that I think of it, back in high school in the late seventies (Ohio) some girls had a weird inflection sometimes. Not up-voice. If anything, more of a down-voice.

When my daughter was young, one of her friends got her in the habit of saying some words with an 'uh' at the end for emphasis, especially 'no.' It was like noo-uh, with the uh sounded with the aid of contracting the diaphragm. Maddening. I loathed it.

Methadras said...

ndspinelli said...

I don't listen to music when I walk. When I walk the beach in San Diego I'll hear conversations of people walking the same pace behind me. Two young women were behind me, I decided to count the number of "like" I heard. In 1 mile, 15 minutes, I counted 342.


Yeah, I think it doubles in LA. I'm pretty sure that it might diminish the more you go inland. Maybe not.

rhhardin said...

It's called a high rising terminal.

Valley girls and Canadians.

Deb said...

My hairdresser inserted "like" between almost every other word the last time I was there, and ended every sentence with a question mark. Also, a young woman in my office speaks in that "up-voice" manner, I suppose you'd call it. I can't describe it but it's VERY annoying, and seems very phony. Her "thank you" sounds like deborah describes: "thank you-uh". Vowels seem exaggerated. I asked a colleague if everyone under 30 talks that way. Makes me want to scream.

ndspinelli said...

Both my kids are under 30 and I would not allow them to talk like that unless they were asking a question. They're also in a lower stanine in using "like." They won't know unless you teach them.

Palladian said...

It's that hideous, faux-gravelly vocalization that I cannot stand. Many young women do it, but it's not exclusive to them; I hear bad young male television actors doing it to sound "serious" or "intense".

virgil xenophon said...

I find both the verbal fry and the high rising terminal or "up voice" to be, in the main, in the almost total purview of women., i.e., teen Valspeak now writ large over time in even the most educated and sophisticated parts of society--in fact seemingly more prominent in the upper than the lower parts..

virgil xenophon said...

@Amartel/

LOL. Yes, all of that, but I've also heard an alternate interpretation, to wit: that the annoying "up voice" is essentially conveying/slyly implying the message: "ya got that, stupid?....understand?"
YMMV..

virgil xenophon said...

PS: Come to think of it, my last post is but another way of describing Methadras'
definition upvoice as implying "impudent sarcasm."

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

You also want the women you bang never to laugh at something unless you laugh first.