The "tic" is vocal fry, AKA "creaky voice."
The whales and dolphins are engaging in echolocation. I'd listen with delight to young women doing vocal fry if I thought it was helping them find their way in the darkness. Well, but... be creative: "the darkness" is a metaphor. It can symbolize the cruel and ignorant world. Who is to say that women are not navigating through the use of those wacky throat vibrations as they speak? They sound more masculine — and more annoying too. Clear the path, they're coming through!
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Maybe someday an intrepid marine researcher will investigate one of these women and find a golf ball in her throat.
So I was like, this guy Ahab is totally harassing me? And maybe I should like notify HR? And he was like, this is the middle of the ocean? And there isn't any HR?
Heh.
A lot of expert women are unlistenable on youtube owing to fry voice. E.g.
Ellie Anderson on philosophy.
The Kardashians are whales. That makes sense, but what's the explanation for uptalk, and beginning sentences with "Soooo?"
And it's an internet fact that Bowhead whales communicate in Valley Girl speak!
Just like it's been known since New England whaling times that Killer Whales model behavior just like the Real Housewives of Atlanta --- "Bitch, you stay away from that school of tuna, or I'll slap you into next week! They mine!"
Like sprinkles on a donut.
Paul Zrimsek said...
So I was like, this guy Ahab is totally harassing me? And maybe I should like notify HR? And he was like, this is the middle of the ocean? And there isn't any HR?
And he totally wanted to, like, stick his harpoon in me? G-ross. He's not even cute.
Ok. Some women speak in a naturally high register and can't do much about it. I have NEVER understood why any woman would think that the odious vocal fry would cause anyone to take her more seriously than ringingly clear diction in her natural register.
I have a low speaking voice but am most comfortable singing in soprano register (unfortunately my choir needs altos and I can sing in that register too). So I've never employed the odious fry.
"It can symbolize the cruel and ignorant world."
Might it not be, that were the World less ignorant, it would be the more cruel?
Be a hero
Save a whale
Save a baby
Go to jail
It boggles the mind that people are upset about vocal fry. I don't even see why it needs a name.
Whales and dolphins use echolocation to find prey. Do young women use vocal cry to find sugar daddies?
By chance, I am reading a book right now about animal culture and some whales (sperm whales in this example) have names--not just names given by whale researchers, but actual what they call each other names--three, in fact. Sets of clicks identify the whale as an individual, as a member of a particular family, and as part of a clan (kind of like an ethnicity). Strangers from the same clan will pal around when they meet, but strangers from different clans will not, and they decide who they can trust by their name.
This identification is one reason why you can't simply release some marine mammals raised in captivity--without names, nobody will take them in. They'll die alone.
Anybody who doesn't find that fascinating, I don't know what to say.
Cyndi Boste deep alto no fry.
Women are just like whales. Got it.
Something fishy with that fry.
Vocal fry makes your testimony sound truthful.
Be very careful when comparing women to whales. It could be the first step on a short path to a black eye.
Personally, I have always found the dulcet tone of Baroness Thatcher to be emotionally and intellectually stimulating.
@Jamie: You were at my graduation ... right? Just how awful was my singing that day? be honest. It was the first and only time I have tried to sing in public, and I am eternally grateful that cell phones didn't exist, and video cameras were rare.
The whales and dolphins are engaging in echolocation. I'd listen with delight to young women doing vocal fry if I thought it was helping them find their way in the darkness. Well, but... be creative: "the darkness" is a metaphor. It can symbolize the cruel and ignorant world. Who is to say that women are not navigating through the use of those wacky throat vibrations as they speak? They sound more masculine — and more annoying too. Clear the path, they're coming through!
This is the modern version of "All words have their roots from greek."
Play on!
Comparing women to whales seems like both fat shaming and misogyny. Cancel WaPo.
tim Maguire @ 10:36. Whales have actual names? Whoa. That's...deep.
Not trying to be funny here. It's such a profoundly social act that I don't know what to do with it. It really forces me to look at whales not as "those creatures" but a community very like our own.
How do these names get earned or given? I guess it's hard to say: we approach the whales "as they are," which is using the names (which we have to infer, I guess, through eavesdropping on their conversations and persistent use of the same calls for the same whales). We aren't likely to stumble onto a "christening" or other "naming" ceremony or event, where the distinctive coding is bestowed.
Fascinating.
Clear the path?
This fishie clears it's own!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqRcwBJxa8
Whales endangered! Women, Minorities, hardest hit!!!
Gahrie - I don't remember being at your graduation,(the year before mine, for anyone eavesdropping); if I was, I don't remember you or anyone singing, so at the very least you can rest assured that you didn't make the kind of impression on me that your "nuclear-tipped bullets" did in debate!
I'm still ticked about that.
Moby dick is everything you wanted to know about whales back to 4th century bc
Trying to crash a whale's christening - where would research ethics come down on this? On the one hand, it seems a serious breach without their consent, which at the moment we don't know how to request or interpret. On the other hand, if we "just happened" to be watching and recording when it happened, and if it were sufficiently unequivocal that lay people could be convinced that that's what it was, it could save lot of whales.
I'm not being facetious either. Whale names are a remarkable discovery.
I assume we are looking for name sounds or other distinctive identifiers among all "higher" animals. I haven't figured out what my dogs call each other, but that they clearly recognize their human name sounds (and one another's - "Sadie, where's River?" and she goes looking for him) suggests that they understand the concept.
What, exactly is m"masculine" about the grating laziness of vocal fry?
What, exactly, is "masculine" about the grating laziness of vocal fry?
"nuclear-tipped bullets" did in debate!
I was trying to refer to the depleted uranium rounds on the A-10's but couldn't remember what they were called.
I grew up in LA, so I agree uptalking was created by teen girls in the San Fernando Valley. The interesting thing about the uptalk is that, even when one is intending to make a declaration, it comes out sounding like suggesting - a polite way of not insisting on whatever point one was making. Of course today, decades later, uptalking is just, like, super-fucking annoying.
Thought that was Melville talking to his publisher at first.
Jamie said...
“Ok. Some women speak in a naturally high register and can't do much about it.”
Sure they can…. Cigarettes and a few martinis on a regular basis will drop that voice to a more tolerable level. :}
"nuclear-tipped bullets" did in debate!
I was trying to refer to the depleted uranium rounds on the A-10's but couldn't remember what they were called.
I remember your telling me that after you won the damn debate by silencing me, the unsilenceable, with it!
Of course I was kidding about still being tiched off. 1. All is forgiven, and 2. All's fair in debate if you can get away with it.
And 3. Sorry, everybody, should have saved this for a cafe! I'm just having a slow day at Casa Burbia!
PM @ 2:46: You mean? That everything? Sounds like a question?
Whatever [insert eye roll].
Ron Livingston takes on vocal fry.
There! There you go! Good! You're talking!
This is one of the cleverest things you've written.
Owen said...
tim Maguire @ 10:36. Whales have actual names? Whoa. That's...deep.
Not trying to be funny here. It's such a profoundly social act that I don't know what to do with it. It really forces me to look at whales not as "those creatures" but a community very like our own.
That was my reaction when I read it--They not only have a sense of their own individual self, but they have a sense of the other whales as other individuals. And the thing about the clans--these are not family units, clans are thousands of whales not necessarily closely related genetically or geographically. They share learned behaviours and habits despite most of them never having met. These are cultures. Yet another behavior we think of as uniquely human that turns out not to be uniquely human.
The book is Becoming Wild; my daughter got it for me for Christmas.
Jamie said...I assume we are looking for name sounds or other distinctive identifiers among all "higher" animals. I haven't figured out what my dogs call each other, but that they clearly recognize their human name sound
I'm almost finished with the section on whales. The next two sections are on Macaws and Chimpanzees. When my daughter gave me the book, I was most interested in the monkeys (who isn't?), but after what it says about the whales, who knows what else is in there?
Lots of social animals recognize other individuals, maybe your dogs do have names. Even if they learned about names from us, who says they're limited to what we teach them?
Ann Althouse said..."The whales and dolphins are engaging in echolocation. I'd listen with delight to young women doing vocal fry if I thought it was helping them find their way in the darkness."
That sounds like it would be a standup routine made for Iliza Shlesinger.
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