All I'm asking is that if your going to speak on the radio or TV, don't sound like a drowsy Kardashian. It's a normal human reaction to be annoyed by speech patterns that are freaking annoying.
Yeah but, uptalk and vocal fry are distinctly American phenomenons. Almost everyone changes their voice when they talk in more formal situations. I speak clearly, louder and change my accent to a more formal British accent, enunciating my words when I'm on the phone. There's nothing wrong with a softly-spoken female accent, but weird, added inflections are horrible.
But what it's a "weird, added inflection" to you might just be the normal way of talking for someone else. It's not "added" if that's just the way someone talks.
As a man who is interested in voice development, I find that every bit of this applies to us as well. Congratulations to NPR for providing solutions to those who are interested.
This is interesting. The up-talking habit is something I find quite irritating. I see it mostly amongst young American women. I always thought it was just a cultural thing. I also think it also makes every statement sound like a question which in turn makes the speaker sound as if they do not really believe their own statements. The higher pitch being seen as less trustworthy I think is understandable. People's voices tend to go up an octave if they are nervous, and its hard to take someone seriously when they appear nervous or excitable.
Lana Voreskova said _"The higher pitch being seen as less trustworthy I think is understandable. People's voices tend to go up an octave if they are nervous, and its hard to take someone seriously when they appear nervous or excitable."_ Yes, that's true, it had not occurred to me. I had written it off as a biological instinct where adults, having deeper voices, must be "the voice of experience" to small, high-pitched voice children, and as humans, that doesn't get an instinctual update, just a cultural one.
Lower pitched voices are older voices. Vocal fry is what happens when people try to intimidate or talk lower so as to deceive others. Uptalk literally sounds like questions. If you ONLY uptalk, even when you should definitely beyond all doubt "down"talk, then you will sound like you are literally questioning what you're saying. Not everything is an attack on women.
Eh? I have vocal fry, and I'm not trying to deceive others. That's just how I talk. Actually, that's how most people (men and women) under 40 talk where I live (the Pacific Northwest.)
women's vocal chords produce a basic wavelength twice that of men's, which put simply, men have twice as much sound, deeper, richer, denser voices, which carry better, hence the tendency of women to shriek when trying to be heard: they have to distinguish their voice from background noise by its high pitch because they can't speak louder than it
i had to learn to yell without making people hate me, in a loud yelling open kitchen i worked in. you really have to reach deeper into your voice to be heard, not up! some diaphragm control helps too, so you can push out more sound and less air. i work in a different, predominantly female environment now. i really wish they would yell differently. screeching and squawking like a bunch of birds is annoying.
Josephine Winter a wavelength that is longer would produce a deeper sound (lower register), not a higher pitched one. I think it is wise to understand the various phenomenon of the world before trying to use those patterns to make analogies. it saddens me than an NPR audience did not catch this. I find NPR people more informed generally. www.boundless.com/users/232513/textbooks/understanding-basic-music-theory/the-physical-basis-3/acoustics-for-music-theory-18/wavelength-frequency-and-pitch-89-13565/
Ow. Right out of front narrator is viciously frying. I think it's an attempt to sound cooler. Smokers and stoners sounds cooler. Not the old ones but the ones who have a little fry to them.
Generally I believe the problem isn't with the pitch or tone, but rather the issue of when someone speaks, words and sentences form. If what comes out is stupid, lacks integrity and confidence then I will probably, no matter the pitch, think the speaker to be stupid. That's what it all comes down to.
While watching this video I just thought about something. Who are the great women orators of history? Who are the Dr King's and JFK's for the women of history? I feel bad that I can't think of one.
I imagine Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt and Elizabeth I (Tudor) were all marvelous speakers. ...It may sound somehow funny, but Oprah built a career by speaking with authority (and also warmth). ....In the 70s I'm sure there were some impressive speeches given by many women. I'd like to see more women today speaking in public on matters about which they have true passion and conviction. Too often we only see candidates, and not enough of them use their own words when they do speak publicly--or they speak of things out of obligation, not conviction. ...I'm sure they are speaking, about important issues, too. We just don't get to hear most of it.
Well, there's Margaret Thatcher, for one. Ever heard her in parliament? Also, keep in mind that Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have a very squeaky voice, yet his Gettysburg speech is supposedly *the* speech for this country.
I don't know about orators, but I can think of a few female actresses with fantastic speaking voices. Natalie Wood, for one. Rita Hayworth had a lovely voice. It's rare to find women who sound like that today. There are many more who sound like Erin Andrews. Andrews sounds like a thirteen-year-old Valley Girl and she's almost 40.
…per the AP Stylebook: ‘…Use Dr. in first reference as a formal title before the name of an individual who holds a doctor of dental surgery, doctor of medicine, doctor of optometry, doctor of osteopathic medicine, doctor of podiatric medicine, or doctor of veterinary medicine: Dr. Jonas Salk…"
A lot of stupid generalizations made in this video. Personally, I'd pay more attention to a woman (or a man) with a higher pitch anyday. At least they're honest about it compared to those who try so hard to fake it.
Then why didn't women speak like this in the past? Why don't you hear this obnoxious vocal fry in other cultures? I can't even listen to npr anymore because of the horrible narrators they are hiring.
One possible explanation could be that as we age, our voice tends to deepen, so therefore we trust the sound of an adult voice over that of a child. I don't know. Definitely food for thought.
Great point, except that this doesn't draw any attention to blacks or women (everything NPR loves to talk about) so naturally, it's not worthy to be on this video on this channel.
I have been listening to NPR for decades. About ten years ago, I heard a young lady reporter who’s voice sounded like a rusty screen door. She would go up, and then down to the vocal fry level. This idiotic practice, along with the “So” to start an answer, and up speak has become the norm. Especially with women. Stop already! You sound like fools!!!
Also, accompanying all that: this vowel shift which takes all the back vowels to frontal positions, so that "pitch" becomes "petch". It's almost as if the throat is so busy doing the fry that it can't produce the sounds it would normally be tasked to produce.
Interesting video. I've noticed that I normally speak with a creaky voice/vocal fry, but when I'm talking to customers, my voice gets way, WAY higher and more "feminine." Most of my coworkers (including some of the men) do the same thing. One of my male coworkers once mentioned how much he hated how he automatically would pitch his voice higher when talking to customers. Maybe if deep voices are considered more authoritarian, high voices are considered more submissive? Says a lot about the dynamic between retail workers and customers, haha!
3:10 "I don't have vocal fry..." Yes, you do. I've heard it at the end of nearly every sentence you've previously spoken in this story. Go ahead and say it doesn't(or shouldn't) matter. Then you can say it doesn't(or shouldn't) matter what you look like to prospective mates or dates. Good luck with that.
This video needs to be digested by the culture. Even a nasal monotone is better than having to listen to uptalking. Then there are all of the "like"s, "I mean"s, and "right"s (as spoken in this video) by those with limited vocabularies and beginning sentences with "so," but that's another issue. Has much to do I think with being overly impressionable even into adulthood.
I have a naturally deeper voice, and when I was younger, kids used to make fun of me for sounding "like a boy", so I started talking higher, and now I hardly ever use my natural speaking voice except with family or close friends. This video encouraged me to appreciate my natural voice, and maybe start using it more often. :D
its not general high or low pitch, its the usage, uptalk sounds like trying to hype up speech. When informationaly talking to someone with uptalk they think you don't know what your talking about because you more focused on hyping up the speech then letting the information speak for itself. Girls/Women/Females uptalk when they are carefree and having fun. Important information doesn't generally come in scenarios where the person giving it is trying to be carefree and have fun with important information. Since females practically uptalk (when they want to seem attractive) at all times....well there you go
As a soprano singer, I have been advised by a former voice teacher NOT to speak in a vocal register that's too low because it would make it that much harder to sing the super high notes when that is required of me in a song. After all, I'm not trying to be Barry White.
***** Because of sounding like a dude. To me, that's my reason. I'm female and have a low voice, and don't like it, but this video kind of does some comforting on it. :)
WhatTechShow I'm also pretty shy singing in front of people, so I like singing alone. But when I listen to music, I found some artists, female artists, who have that low or deep or soft voice and they sound so beautiful and maybe a bit sultry. Like Heather Small from a 90s band called M People, or the soul singer Sade to name a couple. There's also a band called Rhye, but that's actually a guy singing like a female. I know it's not a good example, but they still make me think that's a woman singing so I like to keep that thought. Pretty much they make me feel better about my voice. *Nina Simone is a really good example too.
I'm glad tanvicious brought this up. I was stunned when the story blithely dropped the term "biologically driven" to describe people's judgements based on voice pitch. The PITCH itself is biologically driven, yes. But the reaction to it? Socially inculcated. As for the troll who is claiming that 80% of studies show biological determinism for gendered behavior, I highly suggest looking more closely at those studies. Or, if you lack the time, read _Delusions of Gender_ or other books that have broken down many of the studies that claim to find sex/gender difference and have discovered how methodically flawed they were. If you grow up in a culture that trusts men's expertise more than women's, of course you are going to give deeper (read: masculine) voices more weight. Many of the studies that have played with using identical resumes but only changing the candidate's name from an obviously female one to an obviously masculine one have shown a hiring preference for the "male" candidate. This is not "biologically driven" by some gene or hormone - this is _learned_ behavior based on _learned_ ideas about gender and competency. Shame on NPR for perpetuating this myth. I expect better from you.
SO what is the phenomenon when the female voice falls back into the throat for a gravelly effect in the final words of every sentence. You narrator here does it as well as many younger women.
The gal that said people "can deal" with it...okay. I do. I don't hire them, nor listen to them. The "uptalk" is childish and annoying, and typically a function of stupidity and inexperience. My lifetime of hyper-aware observations corroborates this. Growing up in the 80s, we had similar imbeciles: surfers and valley girls. No one took Jeff Spicoli seriously either. Deal with it, ladies...and all you millennial hipster doofus guys too.
+laurajetcheva Everything is conditioned according to a feminist. It definitely has nothing to do with the fact that testosterone produces a deep voice, high testosterone levels also come with confidence, strength, leadership and dominant qualities in personality and character, but no it's definitely not biological, everything is conditioned.
+Chris Merrick So are you saying that people who have high-pitched voices can't be confident and those with lower voices are all wise, brave souls?? Cause if this is all biological, there must be some rule here.. (asking in a polite, calm manner) And I feel like you see me as solely commenting in regards to women - there are plenty of boys with high-pitched voices and vice versa. What about them? Why do you think the video is called 'Talking While Female' and not 'Having a high-pitched voice' or whatever? People naturally associate high pitch with women and low pitch with men, but that's all that can be said from a biological perspective. The epithets used to describe voices depend solely on one's inclination. I think that the intonation bit is commented on objectively in the video, but even that is always shaped by the phonetics of the specific language spoken. One and the same spoken phrase may sound one way to a native speaker and a completely different way to a non-native one. Hope you've chilled out and started thinking rationally. (said in low-pitch voice) ;) Peace.
laurajetcheva No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm simply saying, the human brain associates a low pitched voice with confidence, calmness, dominance, and security. I(as a man) used to have a fairly high pitched voice, I also used to be anxious all the time. Then I start doing weight lifting, breathing practices, meditation and learning to speak from my balls. My voice is now much lower, nearly lower than everyone I meet. Part of that is genetics, as my dad has a very deep voice, but the other part is that I now speak from my diaphragm, and I am calm and secure with what I say. Humans are wired to be more receptive to lower pitched voices, it's just in our genes. They command more attention. Even the same thing happens in the animal kingdom. The alpha lion has the deepest roar. Are all the lions socially conditioned too?
old comment but anyways. i find people who think everything is social conditioning or everything is innate tiring in different ways, but i won't get into that. a few semesters ago i took a history class with a girl with a high pitched, feminine voice. to me she sounded fragile and on the verge of crying, sometimes. i was genuinely worried if she was okay lol. but if you actually paid attention, the tone of her voice did have cues of assertiveness, such as when she stated her opinions. while her voice was not masculine, it was clear as far as i remember. she didn't slur words like i tend to do. she spoke up more often than most of us. she questioned what the teacher said, and was frustrated when he sometimes came late to class. i know my own voice goes up and becomes very quiet when speaking to authority figures or when i am asking someone for help, so i think i projected this insecurity onto her. so i'm not saying you're wrong but some people really do just have high pitched voices. whatever the case is, we should strive to respect each other and not dismiss someone's ideas because of how they sound.
We aren't really talking about what is natural though. If you INTENTIONALLY talk like an airhead from the movie Clueless, which is what a lot of females do, then people will think you are indeed clueless. I use to dislike my voice because I thought it was too low, but I guess there is a positive side to it.
If you actually change the amount of bass in your speaking voice in order to convince people that you're worthy of being taken seriously for superficial reasons, I would think about whether or not you're worthy of being taken seriously in the first place.
I remember a study that indicated that men who talked to women will generally use a higher tone of voice. Why, I cannot remember. Maybe to sound less threatening? I know that I do it, for sure.
Read the following in a high-pitch up-talk fashion: It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf-Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made. Deep in the land of Mordor, in the Fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a master ring in secret, and into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life. One ring to rule them all.
I use the up talk in a situation where I'm not sure about something, but when I'm sure about something then I speak deeply and clearly. I find it funny that one of my friends, a good deal younger than I am, said to me when he was probably about 7 or 8, I like people like you who talk low and sing high. Maybe he was picking up on this?
How about DO try to change the way you speak to be perceived as more competent, instead of expecting the whole world to change the way it perceives you?
I love how NPR presents "studies" as irrefutable. Studies that make links between two bogus instances without an explanation are just instances. Until the link is found, correlation does not imply causation. There are millions of correlations between two unrelated terms. Here's an example, most cars in an accident were the color black. Does that quickly imply that having a black car makes you crash? Or rather was it the fact that there are generally more black cars on the road than other colors? Sometimes we don't know those extra details because we haven't received. How large was the control group? Was there one where changes were made with a change in voice?
it's not biological.. it's a social construct. that's what your own argument points to, I don't understand how you came to the "it's biological" conclusion.
***** "And by the way, social constructs are dictated by biology itself." All of them? Care to cite something here? Something really, really good? Because that's one hell of a statement.
Sorry aliens, we aren't all like that. Please don't blow up our planet. Some of us can even say five sentences in a row without insulting others for no reasons. Promise!
So you don't like the way of the world in terms of voice recognition, but people should just like you the way you are? Uh, what? If talking isn't your strong suit, and you believe you've practiced to as far as you will go, and you're still not being taken seriously enough, do you think maybe you should invest your time in something else?
Wow. the narrator exhibits everything that is wrong with the way people speak, especially on NPR. My pet peeve these days is Jessica Hansen who does the support credits for NPR. Take note of the random and inane changes in pitch, volume, and stress in her annoying announcements. Her predecessor, Sabrina Farhi was notorious for many of the same tendencies, but she was way worse than Hansen. They all make my skin crawl.
I am a male I like a female who is uptalker....i despise women with low voice like american women.....however i am a uptalker too...i find it easy to talk in this tone as its more expressive....
people who talk out of their normal vocal register sound weird. its simple, talk the way that feels like the sound is coming from the top of your mouth. don't try to pitch your voice downward or sound more "throaty".
I'm wondering, why does the studies cited show that the preference is biologically driven? Could it not just be that we learn to associate deeper voices with authority since we live in a patriarchal society?
let a person hear 2 voices and make that person decide which one sounds more confident is one thing. coming to the conclusion that this would affect everyday live is on a completely different page. we do not consciously assess how confident a person sounds when we meet them. now ofc it might be that we are still influenced subconsciously but that cannot be shown in the way this experiment was conducted. an implicit association test would be closer to allowing these kinda conclusions.
I work around young urban professional women, who - at greater rates as times goes on - seem to mostly talk with a vocal fry. While I do believe one should listen to the content of speech rather than the tone, my experience has been that the content IS quite vapid. For example, the sentence I hear the most is, “Oh my Godddd, have you tried Ezekiel bread? Like, It’s like.... so goooood. Like.... literally... it’s amazeeeeen.” The content involves a lot of “likes,” and a lot of “literally’s.” “It’s like... literally the truth. OMG.” I don’t believe the negative reaction to these speech patterns is inherently sexist, I think it has as much to do with the vacuous content of what’s being said. I have noticed, as well, that you g women who conduct in meaningful, serious conversations exhibit less of the fry, and uptalk. I’m sorry, but to say “it’s amazeeeeeen.its like, literally my favorite. Like, it’s SO good. Oh my god,” is poorly executed speech by anyone’s standards. A man isn’t sexist, or playing into the established misogynist paradigm by thinking that this way of speaking is obnoxious. That being said, I do think that we’re all preprogrammed to receive the female voice and it’s higher pitch with less seriousness than a man’s voice. In this way, the content can be ignored simply by virtue of the pitch being “annoying.” Which, of course, is unfair.
Hailey D False, men that have unusually high voices are disrespected and not taken seriously, because men are expected to possess low firm voices. While men with extremely low voices are often made fun of or sensationalized whether they want it or not. Now please sit down.
lRAYVNl Exactly, because men have lower voices having a higher voice is seen as "woman-like" which is apparently the worst thing a man can be compared to because women are seen as inferior aka not something a man should be *which leads us back to... misogyny.* A set back for women and men who are perceived to be like the supposedly inferior sex and therefore inferior to men who arent.
lRAYVNl lmao well that's ironic considering you just whined on a video with scientific proof that women are *actually* disadvantaged, unlike you. You men are either beyond fucking oblivious or just straight-out idiots i swear.
I don't have a problem with uptalk, high voices or anything like that, but I DO hate, HATE vocal fry. Hearing that on the phone when I'm helping a customer is the worst. I just want them to speak up or something. It's like a combo of mumbling with nails on a chalkboard.
