Following up on our recent Vocal Fry discussion ("Freedom Fries"; "You want fries with that?"), Brett Reynolds wrote to suggest that "Sarah Koenig's vocal fry seems to be something new". As evidence, he suggested a contrast between a piece she did in 2000 ("Deal Of A Lifetime", This American Life #162, 6/23/2000) and one from 2014 […]
Following up on "Freedom Fries", it's worth pointing out that some of the most spectacular examples of creaky voice and vocal fry on This American Life don't come from the young women on the program, but from the host, Ira Glass. Here's the first half-sentence of his opening from the segment on vocal fry: Your browser does not […]
On 1/23/2015, as part of a This American Life show on "What happens when the Internet turns on you?", Ira Glass took up an issue we've devoted a few posts to ("545: If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS — Act Two, Freedom Fries"). Recently, This American Life has been […]
Laura Starecheski, "Can Changing How You Sound Help You Find Your Voice?", NPR All Things Considered 10/14/2014: Just having a feminine voice means you're probably not as capable at your job. At least, studies suggest, that's what many people in the United States think. There's a gender bias in how Americans perceive feminine voices: […]
You'll search Google News in vain for stories about most technical terms in phonetics — no recent coverage of lenition, for example — but "vocal fry" has been prominent in the popular press for several years. Despite all the coverage, many people seem to be unclear about what it is and where it comes from […]
Jeep's Superbowl commercial: [No longer available at YouTube]
For the past year and a half, Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield have been co-hosting the excellent Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, covering many Language Log-friendly topics (and interviewing a few Language Loggers in the process). Now Lexicon Valley has spawned its own blog on Slate, and Language Log has joined up as a partner to […]
For the past few weeks, Lake Bell has been working hard to promote her new movie In a World… NPR set the stage this way ("'In A World …' Is A Comedy About, You Guessed It, Voice-Over Artists", NPR All Things Considered 7/26/2013): Lake Bell has acted in the movies It's Complicated, What Happens in Vegas […]
John Kingston's comment on "Jill Abramson's voice" (10/18/2010) suggests that what's going on in her final low-pitched syllables is a kind of difference tone, or "beat": I wonder if the modulation is a rather extreme form of tremolo, which is a regular variation in level. Now, giving it a name doesn't explain how she does […]
Ken Auletta, "Changing Times: Jill Abramson takes charge of the Gray Lady", The New Yorker 10/24/2011: The first thing that people usually notice about Jill Abramson is her voice. The equivalent of a nasal car honk, it’s an odd combination of upper- and working-class. Inside the newsroom, her schoolteacherlike way of elongating words and drawing […]