"Pop singers, such as Britney Spears, slip vocal fry into their music as a way to reach low notes and add style. Now, a new study of young women in New York state shows that the same guttural vibration—once considered a speech disorder—has become a language fad."
Science Magazine has a big article — and Metafilter's talking about it — but the Althouse blog nailed this topic back in 2007.
६५ टिप्पण्या:
That's it?
Big whoop!
It's not as bad as the interrogatory statement
(I'm Patty? From Vancouver?)
I call that croaking. It comes from the top of the throat and usually isn't used in speaking except as a sign of being too worn out and weakened to do pleasant sounds along with the speech. It is the minimal effort to use speech codes like a dying battery.
You're right, rhhardin, dead on.
I've also noticed, also primarily with younger women, that the "oo" sound in "moon" is enhanced as sort of a flat "ew" sound. So "movie" becomes like "mew-vie". Or "food" becomes like "fewd".
The sing-song pattern is annoying and generally called out by public speaking professors. Women also often end on a high pitch, which I am told is gender-specific.
Bad all around. Vary your vocals is what we teach.
It's not real.
It's computer generated.
Her only talent is strutting across the stage in vulgar outfits.
Not that I mind vulgar outfits....they just don't work for her!
Valley girl with a growl.
I don't know what's so new about it - Lauren Bacall did it for years.
Well, Britney's from Louisiana, too many fish fries and you get vocal fry. I don't know what the other gals' excuse is.
I first noticed this years ago when Jill Abramson was on a video with another Eastcoaster and they both croaked and croaked. I think it is supposed to afford gravitas they feel is missing from "normal" higher pitched female voice. I took it for Ivy League affectation but now it has spread.
Abramson below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldk2wlophS0&feature=related
Is it the same thing Obama does when he's trying to put focus on a word? He does something I'd call grinding.
Jill Abrahamson was the first and is still the worst. I just ran into this by Michelle Fields linked on Powerline just now. It is not as bad as Jill, and she never says, "sort of" which is another marker for ... whatever...whatever...it is that I don't like about our "elite" -educated class. OTOH michelle has a solid message, and is easy on the eyes. Enjoy! Sort of. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/12/myths-of-the-new-deal.php#more-33032
I notice my nieces and their teenage girl friend talking in a manner that sounds like they are trying to talk while holding their breath. It produces a weak, strained tone. Perhaps its part of the same vocal pattern.
It was called glottal fry in my college speech class. I can do it really well. It's good for a laugh sometimes.
Anyone imitating Britney Spears needs psychiatric care.
Heh. I was around a lot of college students recently. Fun to know what that's called now.
Many times it was combined with the interrogatory statement.
But that's okay. It's interesting as far as identification goes, but I don't have any desire to pick on a common way that women talk. I assume it's the result of pop culture.
OMG! John Hinderaker just posted a video link "Myths of the New Deal" where the babe does the vocal fry for six whole minutes.
Gag me.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Video: Myths of the new deal.
"It's not as bad as the interrogatory statement"
I hear more and more young men doing it, too. <shudder>
I blame estrogens in the water supply...
Everyone wants to be Fran Drescher.
Obama does it a little bit here on the word "fighting" (about 7 seconds in), but he frequently does a whole series using the vocal fry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gVxBoC0Ixk&feature=relmfu
That's the way Henry Kissinger talked, just total fry all the time. I think men do that to sound like they have deeper voices.
And female uptalk..it just won't die out here in flyover, especially among the bureaucratic class.
It has a name! Most of the women at my University adopt this affectation. I interpret it as a way to sound indifferent to everything. Which is why it's horrid that it's creeping into the speech of NPR correspondents. I had assumed they would have some quality control there.
Hell, they made a whole movie about it. It's really quite evil.
AAAAAAAAAA
The Althouse blog - for when you just can't quite think of anything to bitch about today.
There should be an app for that.
Once in a while a woman sounds sexy croaking like a frog. Girls never.
Which is why it's horrid that it's creeping into the speech of NPR correspondents.
I thought they'd always been doing that. That and some kind of hypno, you're-hip-if-you-can-listen-without-sleeping voice.
baby, baby, baby. baby, baby, baby.
oops, i did it again.
I recall marking that back when that song first hit the pop zeitgeist, specifically in terms of an in-law who was enjoying her then 7-year-old's dancing and singing to that.
Heh.
It's not as bad as the interrogatory statement
(I'm Patty? From Vancouver?)
That, too.
But it's not just a "girl" thing. The boys do it, too, now, and they have for a while.
Vibrations...young women...low creaky..... Whoa. Enough of the Hitchens death watch.
The current pop-gals don't really sing. Creak is correct. or mewl.
Fiona Apple could sing
Spears has no talent.
Due respect due, Freeman, they didn't--even they, if you prefer, but still, they didn't.
@Mark B:
She models that 'fry' very well, but obviously never had a speech-coach, as the last phrase of almost every sentence disappears--volume-wise.
So the first part is a growl, the last part is gone, and who knows what the speech was all about?
Clearly, the part was cast on assets not related to rhetoric.
If they're all doing it, maybe the rest of us are the ones who sound odd.
Funnily enough, at the time, bits of Britney's performance--the lower-scaledm female voicings--reminded me of Cher in her "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" era--which seemed so ironic, to me, then (and now, to a point), given that Cher herself so helped popularize the whole autotune thing as a value in and of itself with that abomination known as "Believe" (remember that one? serious critics, pro or con, of the technology and trend ought). LOL. She used it to seem higher and younger. Other used it to seem lower and older.
Well, what else could have been expected?
lower-scaledm = lower-scaled,
damn it!
that's not quite it, Miss Hunt. Porno, Inc runs the rock-pop biz (serio), and the singers need to sound like well...it's the money shot--the Big O! At least Britney's faking it good. Madonna started it (tho' like Janis Joplin before her)
yo byro-commal-theatre queer of Sac. Your "rccommal" fraud has been traced as well. Sorta like ...your old days at Brawleys, with ..Prem? Or was it... Billy. Heh heh
(it's stalking women here as well)
I thought they'd always been doing that.
Due respect due to you, Freeman, but they didn't always do that. Not even NPR "they's".
"The Althouse blog - for when you just can't quite think of anything to bitch about today."
My theory is that tube-griping is cathartic for Althouse.
The steady stream of get-off-my-lawnism projected at this blog results in an entirely pleasant non-tube version of Althouse.
Also, Althouse has a reoccurring beef w/ younger gals.
Just sayin'
OTOH, another way to view this whole thing is to contemplate ohmyg-AH-uh-D!!! this, an update of a version of, it's true, an era closer to my own youth.
LOL. Don't care, J. Carry on.
R,
L
It's an attempt to create a 'smoky', sexy sounding voice. For a few women it sounds natural, for most it sounds forced like they are trying too hard. Wannabees.
As Indigo Red pointed out, Lauren Bacall first used that voice years ago. When she was young it added to her appeal; now it just makes her sound like a hag.
If they're all doing it, maybe the rest of us are the ones who sound odd.
True, that, no doubt!
Here is a great example of creaky voice -- Michelle Fields exploding myths about the Great Depression:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/12/myths-of-the-new-deal.php
It's an interesting video as well.
Jim Lindgren
Schorsch said...
" . . . . I interpret it as a way to sound indifferent to everything."
I think you are correct.
xnar,
Forget gagging, fry me!
That was truly quite painful to listen to. I gave myself 30 seconds...
Whenever I hear someone talking like this, it's all I can do to keep myself from shouting out, "Breathe, dammit!!!!"
Is this that oops argument redux?
We've had more Britney Spears posts than Bob Dylan. I shit you not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rduigENzHo
First Ron Paul, then Bill Kristol in this clip from 2007.
Jim Pinkerton too.
Kate Hepburn, and Kate Hepburn impersonations.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/116578/saturday-night-live-vincent-price-christmas
Aw, hell, maybe in the end it's all supposed to converge here, or some version thereof, if not one of the ones that's already existed since the very end of the 1800s, then maybe another, recently written but yet unknown, or maybe one yet to be written.
"It's an attempt to create a 'smoky', sexy sounding voice"
Eva Green has that down.
As a college teacher, I hear absolutely terrible speech patterns, intonations and, of course, grammar, every day. As I'm not a speech teacher, I feel it's not my business to critique such things, but it's often excruciating.
" Everyone wants to be Fran Drescher."
Or Fran Lebowitz.
Jill Abramson always reminds me of Patrick's fiance in Auntie Mame.
Link, damn it! LOL. ; ) See Gloria Upson, of course.
wv: table
As in, put in on there.
How could I have forgotten Upson Downs? And dacquiris with honey?
" Everyone wants to be Fran Drescher."
Or Fran Lebowitz.
But never Fawn Lebowitz. I guess it must be the kiln explsions....
I think ranting against linguistic trends is like raging at the moon for rising. I can just imagine the 14th century Althouses in England (let's assume they came from England) complaining about how the kids just don't pronounce their vowels properly: "they pronounced feet like /fit/". Get over it, the language changes.
So, the study in question didn't actually examine the increased prevalence of this and yet that is the claim of the headline. This is yet another non-story.
Put another way, this is one of those things that nobody noticed much until attention was drawn to it. It grates at some people, but so do a lot of speech patterns. Rising inflections at the end of non-questions irritates me as do affected accents, especially "southern belle." And adults doing baby talk--that is cause for strangulation.
As a kid, whenever I wanted to sound like a zombie I would exagerate this vocal pattern.
I like the vocal fry. It sounds normal to me. Surrounded by it.
I nominate the "chagrin voice" for worst recently developed vocal mannerism. It's usually female and shows up in ads to convey fake embarassment on the part of the speaker. Like, oh no I bought the wrong product/"let" the husband do the laundry/etc. (See, e.g., the Angie's List ads where the plumber "has to" walk her dog.) Less but still annoying is the "smile voice" (where even if you don't see the speaker you can hear him smiling) (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/01/03/smile-communication.html).
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