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Creaky Voice: Another Example of Young Women's Linguistic Ingenuity
- leephillips 13y agoI might be deaf to this. I watched the interview with some girl I never heard of and, although I found her very annoying for several reasons, I couldn't hear the "creaky voice" thing.
- xutopia 13y agoMy impressions exactly. Does anyone have another example? I think I'm missing the main point of the article because I don't get the example.
- freehunter 13y agoWhat is the point in mentioning that you've never heard of Zooey Deschanel, a popular celebrity (who starred in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)? Does that add something to your comment, or are you just trying to show proud you are of being out of touch with popular culture?
- leephillips 13y agoSo she's an actress? Is that what you're telling me?
- freehunter 13y agoIt's odd that your own website has a movie section and a link to IMDB and several movie critics [1] and yet you're here on HN trying to show off pretending that you're so far removed that you have to go out of your way to explain to random people that you don't know who this person is when no one asked if you knew and knowing who she is isn't even relevant to the topic. Do you walk down the street telling passers-by that you don't follow celebrities? Is it that important to you? [1] http://lee-phillips.org/info/movies/movies.html http://lee-phillips.org/info/movies/movies.html
- leephillips 13y agoNo, but I was in the supermarket the other day and noticed that almost every magazine in the checkout area had the same woman on the cover, so I asked my wife, "Who is this Kim Kardashian?" She didn't know, either. Is she an actress, too? And, I should really update that page. It's ancient! - doesn't even follow my current style.
- scott_s 13y agoImpressive. I usually can't remember the names of people I've never heard of before.
- leephillips 13y agoNeither can I. But I hear about her all the time. I just don't know why.
- GHFigs 13y agoRecognition and recall are different things. You can recognize an actor in a film without knowing their name, and you can recognize a name without knowing who the person is.
- baggachipz 13y agoApply cold water to burn area
- _fs 13y agohttp://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention...
- GHFigs 13y agoIs this important to you?
- detst 13y agoI'm not freeunter and it's not important to me but it is obnoxious; that being someone going out of their way to make themselves seem above something or someone else when no one asked nor cares. --- [Ignore below. I misread the comments but I'm leaving for context. I think the above comment stands without the evidence below.] Quoting from above: some girl I never heard of ... and below: I hear about her all the time He may not know that she's an actress but it's clear he had previously "heard of" her and lying only makes it more obnoxious. It's the same behavior you can read about in The Onion link.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y agoIf you have never heard of someone, you wouldn't know what they usually sound like EDIT: PS I haven't heard (of) her before either
- leephillips 13y agoYou're in for it now.
- freehunter 13y agoYou don't need to know who the person is to be able to hear what they sound like. When I first heard of this effect it was a sound clip of a blogger with whom I am not familiar with, but I got the gist of it without knowing her identity. The point is the what, not the who. They could have put any affected female in her place without changing anything.
- josephers 13y agoHere's another article, and a good voice example: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/vocal-fry-creeping-into-us-speec.html http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/vocal-fry-cree... http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/vocalfryshort.mp3 http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/vocalfryshort.mp3
- ultramundane8 13y agoThanks, I didn't know what the article was referring to either. Your link is a clear demonstration, and I think I get it. I now feel like anyone who cares about this is unhealthily nitpicking.
- jkbyc 13y agoI hear it in your example but I don't in the interview. Isn't that her normal voice? Or is she singing a whole song with vocal fry? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ThRVUcmSa0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ThRVUcmSa0 (Dream a Little Dream of Me)
- scott_s 13y agoWhen she first starts talking, it's in how she says "I did, yeah..."
- mtinkerhess 13y ago> I found her very annoying for several reasons Care to elaborate? I watched the clip and didn't find it off-putting except for the shallow personality traits that I associate with her vocal mannerisms, which was kind of the point of the article.
- leephillips 13y agoMaybe I'm more crotchety than you and find "shallow personality traits" and certain "vocal mannerisms" more annoying. These were not the point of the article, which was about one particular vocalization, which I could not detect. What was "very annoying" to me? The vocal tic of saying "like" every three words, the constant tossing of the head and hair, the speaking in a tumble of disconnected, cliched fragments rather than in sentences, the general vapidity, the garish makeup, etc.
- luxpir 13y agoI suppose this behaviour is designed, perhaps sub-consciously, to influence the opinions held by others of the speaker. To encourage them to 'like' the speaker. We can all control how we talk, but some seem more conscious of it than others. As someone who (thinks he) can notice a switch in vocal register like any other obvious pattern change, the behaviour also screams out to me each time I see or hear it. But I don't dislike it; the speaker merely has a job to do and a social environment to fit into. I hear something similar in some (particularly American) men. It's an over-emphasis of the depth of their voice. I think I've noticed a fair few others over the years but there are likely a million other traits in people of all ages that I've never noticed. All designed to influence the listener in some way. After all, people don't typically speak to grandparents the same way they speak to friends. Why not? It's probably a primal, perhaps evolutionary behavioural trait, but my point is that it's not specific to vapid celebs. We probably all do it to some degree.
- leephillips 13y agoInteresting observations. It seems obvious to me that most celebrities under the interview lights are chiefly concerned with being liked. You might find this paper relevant: http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/a_nonverbal_signal_in_voices_of_interview_partners_effectively_predicts_communication_accommodation_and_social_status_perceptions.pdf http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/a...
- Kluny 13y agoI think they're talking about the way she sort of drags out words like "I di-id" or "It i-is". Unless I'm wrong.
- cafard 13y ago'"I ne saugh nawiht" in Middle English; "I don't see anything" in Modern English. Today, one can find it in French, which negates verbs by affixing the particles ne and pas to either side of the verb, as well as in Afrikaans, Greek, and a number of Slavic languages. The point: There is nothing inherently "ignorant" or "stupid" about double negation; judgments about speech are judgments about the speakers themselves.' There is nothing inherently English about Greek and a number of Slavic languages. There ain't nothing much that Afrikaans tells us about the practice of Modern English (is there, baas?) and only so much light that Middle English sheds.
- Cushman 13y agoDouble negation is also a feature of modern English; the point is no one can claim speakers of Middle English, French, Afrikaans et cetera are ignorant or unintelligent.
- icebraining 13y agoNo, but it's disingenuous to claim people who consider the speaker to be ignorant are only taking into account the double-negation, when the phrase contains a combination of multiple factors, such as language and content.
- Cushman 13y agoThat is very much the point, I think. You can't judge the speech negatively on its merits, since emphatic negation is a regular feature of many languages. You can judge the speech negatively on the basis of who you think the person is, in this case "black". There are some obvious issues with confusing these things.
- icebraining 13y agoYou can't judge the speech negatively on its merits, since emphatic negation is a regular feature of many languages. But the speech isn't in "many languages", it's in a particular language where the double-negation is considered incorrect, therefore there's no need to make assumptions about race or background to consider the speaker ignorant.
- JonnieCache 13y agoAlso fun to try: justifying ones use of "innit" as a general purpose tag with reference to the french "n'est-ce pas." This drives people up the wall, as there's no comeback to it, and it invokes the shallow europhilism which the kind of person who tells me off for saying "innit" typically indulges in constantly.
- Osmium 13y agoDon't disagree with you, but I imagine those people would have less problem with "isn't it?" vs "innit?"
- JonnieCache 13y agoTrue, but that would overlook the other purpose of linguistic tags like that, which is to improve the rhythm of speech. The french know all about this. Plus I just like saying it.
- tankenmate 13y agoEven though the French themselves drop consonants like crazy; try pronouncing n'est-ce pas with all the written consonants. EDIT: typo
- ceautery 13y agoThere was a good discussion about this on Language Hat a few months ago: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004914.php http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004914.php
- bluthru 13y agoThe author never makes a case for why vocal fry might be warranted. I personally find vocal fry to be annoying because it's the linguistic version of slouching. Support your voice properly and clearly speak so the other person can hear you. Vocal fry is just another manifestation of "I'm cool because I don't care."
- Cushman 13y agoExcuse me, who "warrants" the way you talk?
- wittysense 13y agoQuote for poignancy and mention of authoritative diction as a pass of, well, authority. I bet this all fits well into NORM dialectics. We may need 911 to help these idiolects.
- JasonFruit 13y agoOooh, you learned a new acronym! Now you can use it instead of reasoning.
- wittysense 13y agoYou're being intellectually dishonest.
- Cushman 13y agoWell I wouldn't call them ideolects to their face-- makes 'em ornery.
- wittysense 13y agoOh. I pushed the literal button. "We shouldn't be afraid of a few glyphs on a screen."
- defen 13y ago
- Shish2k 13y ago> Had [old white dudes] been the ones to pioneer these tics, we'd be praising them as enriching expansions of the language. We'd be reading The, Like, New Yorker I wasn't aware (and still don't care) which social group started adding "like" to everything; the reason it bothers me is that it adds noise without adding signal... (Though I'm not a linguist; maybe there is some signal there that I'm just not consciously aware of?)
- laquiechanaenae 13y agoImplied culture, style, and casualness are certainly signal, though not in the formal academic sense.
- showerst 13y agoThat usage sense is called a discourse particle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like#As_a_discourse_particle.2C_filler.2C_hedge.2C_or_speech_disfluency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like#As_a_discourse_particle.2C... It can contain signal when used as a hedge ("The restaurant is only, like, five miles from here.") but generally that usage just substitutes for 'uh' or 'um' while signaling some group-membership (originally Valley Girl I think?)
- Cushman 13y agoPersonally I've observed many meanings in use. As an adverb it means "figuratively" or "approximately". As a hedge word it more generally disclaims that what follows may be inaccurate or metaphorical. It's used in the place of "to say" or "to impart", filling in for the lack of a word which applies equally to text messages as to speech, with the implication (since it's a hedge) that the quoted speech is likely re- or paraphrased. It can be used as a mild intensifier, as in, "Okay, but, like..."; despite what you may think, simply adding weight to a phrase can and does alter it semantically. So it's a very versatile word, and there are other uses I've missed. And of course, it is used purely as a stall (er, a disfluency), though not heavily outside of a few dialects. All of this falls under the linguistic study of "discourse", the way humans talk in real-world communication with each other. In linguistics, rules of discourse are real and as important as rules of grammar. Nobody uses only "approved" words or meanings of words or interactions of words; the ideas human beings communicate are more complex than that. Having laid all that out, I'll say something you'll probably find challenging: the real reason you don't like it is because you don't know what it means. Which is of course the point of it, and the reason to label it as innovation.
- joezydeco 13y agoCreaky voice? That's sooooo 2012. It's all about the creaky-voiced long alveolar glide with mid front unrounded vowel and glottal stop. "A linguistic dissection of 7 annoying teenage sounds" http://theweek.com/article/index/244460/a-linguistic-dissection-of-7-annoying-teenage-sounds http://theweek.com/article/index/244460/a-linguistic-dissect...
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- btbuildem 13y agoClever, clever article. Anything you say in criticism of it will get you labelled an Old White Dude.
- zeteo 13y agoI sure hope next generation's NORMs won't speak in creaky voices. This looks a lot more like another cycle of fashion than true "ingenious" "innovation". What society-wide improvements in communication does it effect?
- neilk 13y agoIf you can't hear it in Zooey Deschanel's voice, a desk clerk with extravagant vocal fry was a gag in the movie Young Adult. Here's just a part of the scene (2nd clip on the page) http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/young-adult-clips/ http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/young-adult-clips/
- olgeni 13y ago> judgments about speech are judgments about the speakers themselves. And so is "old white dudes". > When it comes to language, the rules of natural selection apply: Evolve or perish. I demand strong affirmative action for the less privileged languages.