Medical uptalk
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In earlier posts on the final-rising intonation patterns known as "uptalk", I've commented that "there are many conflicting assertions about its phonetic shape as well as its social distribution and its contextual function, but surprisingly few published examples that we can use to evaluate these claims", at least with respect to the North American version. So as I notice notice relevant examples in publications like archived radio shows, I've been documenting them here.
A couple of other examples turned up yesterday, in a "Radio Gift" segment on NPR's Day to Day program: "Dr. Boots Tries A No-Insurance Model", about Elizabeth Crowley, a doctor in New Jersey who decided to stop taking health insurance payments. (There's more background here, and the featured doctor also has a blog that's well worth reading.)
The first set of final rises comes in a passage where Dr. Crowley explains why she wears boots to work:
So when I was in medical school /
I tried to wear like the regular um
flat like girl shoes /
and uh my foot started hurting —
and so it's really a comfort issue/
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A bit later, there's an audio clip from one of Dr. Crowley's patients, in which two phrases with final rises are followed by a series of final falls:
She doesn't wear a uniform that establishes a kind of um barrier /
between herself and her patients /
you just feel a rapport \
as a result of something as small as that, or \
what sounds small is actually very large. \
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There are other clips of Dr. Crowley, later in the segment, where there's no uptalk at all, e.g.
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On a completely different topic, I recommend one of Dr. Crowley's blog posts ("Can you blame them?", 11/20/2008), which includes this widely-applicable suggestion: "When looking at the changes in the healthcare plan, we must ABSOLUTELY NOT lose sight of the fact that if we do not simplify this process it will not work."
[Note: in this post, I've made the pitch contours using the free software program Praat, and done some other editing and modification of audio files using audacity and sox, and created the screenshots using gimp. ]
Elizabeth Crowley said,
January 5, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
Ok, I'll admit, I googled myself. Lots of people have said lots of things about my 5 minutes of fame on NPR, but little did I know that someone had done an analysis of phonology!! That's so cool!
Thanks for your supportive comments about my blog content, too.