Today's topic is a simple solution to a complicated problem. The complicated problem is how to estimate "pitch range" in recordings of human speakers. As for the simple solution — wait and see. You might think that the many differences between the perceptual variable of pitch and the physical variable of fundamental frequency ("f0") arise […]
During the 2016 presidential campaign, there was a lot of negative commentary about Hillary Clinton's voice. Some examples from across the political spectrum are compiled and discussed here, and even-the-liberal-The-Atlantic published on "The Science Behind Hating Hillary's Voice". Since Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pretty much got a pass for vocal characteristics analogous to Hillary's, it was […]
In the context of the current political season, I've started taking a look at rhetorical styles, including the aspects of rhythm, pitch, and voice quality for which linguists generally use the cover term "prosody". Our enormously over-long list of topic categories didn't include "prosody", so I've added it — and in the process of labeling […]
Molly Worthen, "Stop Saying 'I Feel Like'", NYT 4/30/2016: In American politics, few forces are more powerful than a voter’s vague intuition. “I support Donald Trump because I feel like he is a doer,” a senior at the University of South Carolina told Cosmopolitan. “Personally, I feel like Bernie Sanders is too idealistic,” a Yale student […]
The internet has been working hard at providing Deborah Cameron with material for a book she might write on attitudes towards women's voices. (Background: "Un justified", 7/8/2015; "Cameron v. Wolf" 7/27/2015.) To see what I mean, sample the tweets for #JeopardyLaura, or read some of the old-media coverage, like "Is this woman the most annoying 'Jeopardy!' contestant ever?", Fox News […]
Doonesbury, "Say What?" 8/1/2015: "It was my phrase. I came up with it, and I had it copyrighted. And people see the biggest standing ovations…and all of a sudden some of the other candidates started using the phrase. But I had it copyrighted, so they're not allowed to use it. Which even surprises me." — […]
Back in February, Arika Okrent asked "What is vocal fry?", in her column at Mental Floss. And she pointed out that People’s voices naturally drop in pitch at the end of phrases, and in many speakers, it will drop into the fry zone at that point. The evidence that it’s a female thing is also […]
Naomi Wolf, "Young women, give up the vocal fry and reclaim your strong female voice", The Guardian 7/24/2015: What’s heartbreaking about the trend for destructive speech patterns is that yours is the most transformational generation – you’re disowning your power. […] [T]he most empowered generation of women ever – today’s twentysomethings in North America and […]
Yesterday ("Pinker peace creak") I followed up on Breffni's reference to vocal fry/creak in the speech of the young woman who introduces Steven Pinker's talk at the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Forum. And indeed, in her first 40 words (16 seconds of audio, 8.3 seconds of voiced speech, 1,653 f0 estimate) I found three clear examples of […]
As Breffni noted yesterday in a comment on "Male vocal fry", the young woman introducing Steven Pinker's speech at the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Forum frequently exhibits lots of period-doubling — what the popular press generally calls "vocal fry", though "creaky voice due to period-doubling" would be a more correct description. Here's the start of the introduction, with red boldface used […]
"From Upspeak To Vocal Fry: Are We 'Policing' Young Women's Voices?", Fresh Air (NPR), 7/23/2015: Journalist Jessica Grose is no stranger to criticism of her voice. When she was co-hosting the Slate podcast, the DoubleX Gabfest, she would receive emails complaining about her "upspeak" — a tendency to raise her voice at the end of […]
Sameer ud Dowla Khan, a phonetician at Reed College, has written an open letter to Terry Gross, which starts like this: While I am a loyal fan of your program, I’m very disappointed in your interview of David Thorpe and Susan Sankin from 7 July 2015. As both a phonetician who specializes in intonation, stress patterns, and […]
"Girl Talk: What’s more annoying — vocal fry or the way we criticize how women speak?", by Sophie Goldstein, in The Nib ("Political cartoons, comics journalism, humor and non-fiction"). Also see xkcd on "How it works". Unfortunately, several of the associated audio clips seem to be missing (e.g. here and here), and some others load for me […]