Has "vocal fry" made it across the Atlantic yet?

Oh weird! Hadn’t particularly noticed it here – in the USA – bu can recognize it from the video. None of my English nieces talk that way but I haven’t heard it in person in America either.

@janbb I’m amazed that you’re not hearing this! I hear it all the fucking time.

@janbb – It’s impossible to go 60 seconds without hearing this in the Boston area.

@thorninmud Yeah and it’s funny because I work with young adults. Maybe now I’ll notice and be annoyed by it. Thanks a lot, thorny! :-)

Funny. I would have said “no”, after watching that annoying video – but I just tried it in German, and found myself speaking like my teenage cousin. She only uses that deeper, less enthusiastic tone when being sarcastic, but it is definitely there!

Never heard any girl do that over here, when the inevitable happens & it does start creeping in, i’m going to recommend either a whole thing of throat lozengers or they shut the fuck up.

I’ve heard it in a couple of young girls. No one I know personally though. They just sound ditzy.

It’s also infected NPR, which is terribly disappointing. A friend recommended NPR’s Invisibilia podcast, but I couldn’t tolerate more than a few seconds.

@Dutchess_III The presenter in the video makes a good point, though: this style of speech passes for cultured and educated nowadays, definitely not ditzy.

@hominid Funny, this question occurred to me as a result of listening to that podcast.

I just showed my daughter (15) that vid & she already knew of the irritating fad in young US female celebs, she rolled her eyes & slightly curled her lip.

“his style of speech passes for cultured and educated nowadays, definitely not ditzy.”
Not to me.
To me, it sounds dumb, containing major hints of superficial snarkiness and not-giving-a-shit.

I have wondered for some time if it has to do with an attempt to get the voice to go lower. I recall reading about how men will adjust the pitch of their voice depending on who they are talking to (where they stand in the social/workplace hierarchy). Years ago, my sister started talking like this – but only when she was attempting to discuss something serious or be taken seriously.

When I hear people on NPR being interviewed, they will start off without the fry. But when asked to explain some complex topic that they are presumably an expert in, the vocal fry makes an appearance. Could this just be an attempt to make the voice sound lower and more authoritative?

Just a thought.

I believe that this fad originally started in the wealthy suburbs on Paris – it was originally known as the French Fry.

@ucme Wait, isn’t that how 15 year-olds react to everything?

@thorninmud Not my daughter, when she reacts that way, then you know it has to be crass.

What the first commenter on that video said: “It amazes me when I see a woman shaming other women because of their fucking accent.”

@hominid It’s also infected NPR

Eleanor Beardsley reporting from Paris sounds like she’s burping her reports into the microphone

@hominid Yeah, I work on a university campus, and this is the archetypal “female grad student voice”. I’ve wondered if it isn’t meant to be anti-sexy—kind of the opposite of a breathy “come hither” voice—and so distance the speaker from being taken lightly on account of her gender.

I think they do it for the “I don’t give a shit” attitude it implies.

@thorninmud I wish the examples in the video had been more protracted and done in a less cutesie manner. I’m still struggling with the uptick which I hear so much – even on NPR.

I hear it on tv all the time but didn’t know it was a thing. All Australians speak with an uptick so I don’t think it’s here yet.

I’d love to hear the opinion of Stephen Fry on this, bound to be vocal.

Why does everyone refer to this solely as a female thing? Plenty of men also do it. Watch any interview with Bradley Cooper, for example.

@dappled_leaves – I don’t think anyone would refer to this as specifically a female phenomenon. I have never (and would never) listen to a Bradley Cooper interview, but I’m sure you’re right. And Noam Chomsky comes to mind as someone who is unbearable to listen to due to his fry (he’s all fry). But here in New England (and NPR), the phenomenon appears to be significantly more common in women.

@hominid Not according to Ira Glass, who freely admits he also does it.

I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Let me put it this way, here in the Boston area, you are far more likely to come across this if you are talking to someone who is female. But more importantly, you are far more likely to come across this on 2/17/2015 than you would have been on 2/17/2005 or even 2/17/2010. Here in the New England area, you will meet people you have known your entire life, and suddenly they are talking with the fry. Last year they didn’t, this year they do. It’s not subtle.

I am far more interested in the fact that people are going from no-fry to fry than whether or not this is a male or female thing. But making the factual statement that I now (as of 2/17/2015) experience this in far more women than men shouldn’t be cause for concern. You seem to be irritated by this thread overall, and specifically that we’re not talking about men. There’s a reason I’m not – I don’t travel much and don’t listen to Ira Glass. I’m limited to my geographical area and the limited exposure to NPR.

@dappled_leaves That’s a very interesting piece. An informed discussion. I was sitting here trying to use a vocal fry but it hurts. I think it’s true that young people pick up speech patterns from each other (as do older people maybe with other patterns) and “get over It” seems to be the wisest advice.

(As an interesting aside, Channa Joffee Walt went to summer camp with my son but I can’t remember what her voice was like then.)

@hominid Well, how about listening to the piece I just posted? His take on it, and the interviewed linguist’s take on it, is that young men and women do it, but people are calling women out on it and not men. It’s very easy to criticize young women who are speaking publicly; I’m sure that feels right for a lot of people. But when you start to realize that most young people do it, what are you going to do, condemn absolutely all of them? Or perhaps just stop complaining.

Damn kids today.

@dappled_leaves – Sure, I’ll listen to it. But I think you’re missing my point(s). A) Listening to an analysis of this will be interesting, but will unlikely change the fact that more women do this in my world than men. (Save confirmation bias comments for someone else), and B) Is this a young person phenomenon? Most of the people I know who do this are late 30’s, early 40s. Is this considered “damn kids today”, and C) I find discussion to be distinct from complaining.

@hominid “will unlikely change the fact that more women do this in my world than men”

But the point of the NPR piece I posted is that people tend not to notice when men do it. So, no, I don’t believe your claim.

@dappled_leaves: “So, no, I don’t believe your claim.”

No need to. Don’t.

@hominid Well, this has been productive. I remember when you used to have an open mind.

Oy vey. Don’t bother.

@dappled_leaves – I love a good fight more than most people. But I have to admit that I find little to fight about here. You seem to have an ax to grind, and I can’t find anything interesting to go with here.

@hominid I am not the one with the axe to grind! I present new information for discussion, and you repeatedly jump in to say “I will not listen to that, but you are wrong.” What kind of discussion begins with “I refuse to listen to that”?

And in any case, why even engage with me if you don’t care what I have to say? My posts were not directed at you.

@dappled_leaves – Ok. I said I would listen to that, so I did. I went there for the data – in particular the data that supposedly refuted my claim that in the upper-middle-class Boston suburb, @hominid is more likely to hear vocal fry from women of all ages than men of all ages. I didn’t hear that data. Did I miss it? Did I also miss the time that I typed “I refuse to listen to that”? I’m confused. It seems that you want to pick a fight with someone that likely doesn’t disagree with you at all.

Note: I never had an “open mind” or claimed to. :) Not sure what you’re talking about.

I just conducted a snap poll with myself & the resulting data makes for interesting reading.
What do I find more irritating, “vocal fry” or “oy vey” ?
Results coming in suggest a landslide victory for the latter, reaction as soon as we get it…

Speaking as an audio-video producer, editor and, on occasion, professional voice talent, I call vocal fry an abomination.

So…I have spoken with what is apparently vocal fry as long as I can remember talking. It happens after I’ve been speaking for awhile with nothing to drink. It’s not a damn affectation. Didn’t ever notice I did it until I heard that NPR interview dappled linked to a few weeks ago. I think the little hissy fit the internet is throwing over it right now is pretty lame and woman-shaming.

^ Amen.

I have only heard this on television.

thank gawwd

I haven’t noticed it. I’m going to listen out for it from now on.

The only time I get that gravelly sound is when I have a cold. Damn, does this mean when I have a cold people will think I’m affected and putting on this vocal fry thing?

And yes @trailsillustrated, the damn uptick thing is so, like, annoying!

@Earthbound_Misfit I didn’t know uptick was a thing until I went overseas ehhhh

I believe it is a knee jerk, subconscious negative reaction to the valley girl phenomena. It is the exact tonal opposite of it.

This has been very interesting to me. I’m really glad I asked this question.

I wasn’t at all aware that this had become such a hot-button topic, or even a topic at all. It wasn’t any form of media or commentary that first made me aware of this phenomenon. The Ira Glass segment @dappled_leaves linked says that this became an internet topic in 2011, but years before that I had noticed it just from hearing it around me; no one had brought it to my attention. In fact, here’s a 2009 Fluther thread in which I (as Harp) both talk about my having noticed it and discover that it was a labeled phenomenon. Several other users chime in on that thread to express their irritation with it.

I’m quite willing to accept that males are also speaking like this. I do hear that. My 20-something son does it, and my 20-something daughter does not. I find it just as irritating in my son’s voice as in any other instance. So I’m not selectively filtering it out from my perception of male speech. But the fact remains that I originally heard this as a thing young women were suddenly doing that they hadn’t been doing before, and that I still hear it far more in female speech. I expect that it will become more and more gender-neutral as time goes by.

I’m sympathetic to those who see this as “just the way I talk”. One’s voice is a very personal thing, very integral to the self-image, and like the other things that make up self-image we lose sight of the fact that they’re mostly absorbed from the cultural soup in which we’re raised. This is true of vocal styles. Styles come and go with eras and their cultures. I never heard anything like vocal fry in my many years among the French in the 80’s, male or female. I still don’t, from my more limited exposure now.

The 20-something Americans of today don’t find vocal fry noteworthy because it’s been a constant of their soundscape. It just seems like a natural feature of speech. Some of us are old enough to remember a time that was largely fry-free. It’s appearance on the scene strikes us as a curiosity, not an inevitability. Maybe you can see what I mean by imagining that young American males suddenly took to speaking nasally, so that that just became the way young in-group males sounded. Wouldn’t you think that odd? And irritating?

I do find vocal fry irritating. I find myself wishing that the speaker would just open up their throat and let the voice out, instead of putting the choke on it. It becomes an impediment to communication, a distraction to what’s being said. It isn’t a pleasant sound. “Smoker’s voice” irritates me in the same way. I don’t think any less of the person speaking this way, I just have a hard time listening to it.

Part of my fascination with this is in observing how such a vocal style propagates, which is the motivation behind this question.

“Part of my fascination with this is in observing how such a vocal style propagates”

Do you think its spread is propagated through airborne vectors or do you have to exchange body fluids?

My personal opinion is that it is an oral-fecal transmission.

@rojo So yyo0u’re blaming the human centipede for this?

@janbb hadn’t thought of that! Not sure whether I want to now!

It just seems like there must be some pejorative expression behind so many people finding vocal fry so annoying they want women who speak with it to shut up. Maybe the backlash against vocal fry is part of the culture that would have women speak like this (go to 6:20) or this. Maybe vocal fry is what lies behind the masking techniques women used to use more frequently than they do today to make their voices sound higher, breathier, sexier, hesitant, and it annoys some people because of their implicit bias against women with deeper, raspier, scratchy, not-trying-to-be-sexy voices.

Vocal fry can’t be that new. My daughter watches a Strawberry Shortcake cartoon made in 2009 and two of the characters (twin ladybugs) have a heavy vocal fry.