At a convention I recently attended, one of the sessions featured two energetic, young women who shared a host of clever strategies they used to reboot a small, struggling, waterfront museum. I feverishly took notes, hoping to harvest ideas for my own work with local museums.
However, as delightful as the young women were, they had a pattern of speech that drove me up the wall. Each of them ended her declarative sentences on the upswing, as if asking a question. You know what I mean? Many of our young people have this same habit of finishing their statements with question marks.
Linguists call this speech pattern "uptalk," and it appears to have begun with the Valley girls of California and migrated East. It can now even be heard in young British women, and there are more than a few young men, like my grandson, who have adopted the habit. When you are in their presence, you almost feel compelled to respond, "Right" or "Uh-huh" to the simplest statement because you think they are asking you a question.
Many teen, 20-, and 30-something women are also practitioners of "vocal fry." That's the habit of ending sentences on a down-beat and with a guttural scratchiness, as if one needs to clear her throat. More than a few women reporters on National Public Radio exhibit this trait. I've read speculation that women are doing this to mimic a male's deeper voice and claim some of his presumed gravitas. The female speech foibles don't end there. Young women are also more prone than young men to use run-on sentences, as well as to speak with a certain breathiness.
You may be thinking, "What's the harm in all of this? Why pick on young women?" Well, unfortunately, these speech affectations are hurting a whole generation of them because those in authority aren't able to take them seriously. This has major implications for performance in the classroom and the business world.
Time magazine noted that a study found these speech patterns make "young women sound less competent, less trustworthy, less educated and less hirable." In a male-dominated world, it is difficult for any young woman to demand attention for her ideas if she speaks in a way that leaves doubt or makes her seem immature. This can erect roadblocks to future professional advancement.
Oxford University English professor Elleke Boehmer complains her female students avoid strong declarative sentences and don't organize their thoughts well. She often observes that female students are anxious "about coming forward to express an opinion, to risk a point of view, so often letting the male students speak first and second and even third."
A study by Catalyst, a research and advisory organization dedicated to expanding women's work opportunities, found that being able to advocate forcibly for yourself correlates to workplace status and pay more directly than competency. This means that in the eyes of supervisors, working hard is less important for your career than speaking well and being able to shares your ideas.
We now have the most empowered generation of women in history, yet many of them are willing to compromise their further advancement by speaking in the cadences and style of pop divas and Hollywood starlets. So, what's to be done?
As with most youth issues, the solution lies in the home and classroom. Parents, mentors and teachers — especially women — should counsel girls from middle school on regarding proper speech patterns. And this has to be done in nonconfrontational ways. For example, when my teenage granddaughter starting uptalking, I responded to much of what she said with, "I didn't know that." This produced stares and didn't help at all.
A first step toward breaking these bad habits may be simply sharing this column with young women. Also, it is essential that adults not fall into any aberrant speech patterns themselves in an effort to "fit in" with the younger set.
Ally Tubis, a 29-year-old who leads the Analytics and Insights Team at Rodale Publishing, took voice lessons to lose her bad habits. She offers, "When my voice became stronger, people took me more seriously. When people feel from your voice that you are confident, they will believe that you are smarter, and that you are better at what you do — even when you are saying the exact same thing."
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears Fridays. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
