Performance Skill for the Educator: Vocal “Problems”

Vocal Fry

Vocal fry is the use of the lowest register of your voice in a way that leads to creaky, breathy sounds. When used in regular speech, vocal fry is not damaging to your voice, but it can become a habit.   Like any habit, it can then become unnoticed to the speaker.  There is conflicting evidence of listeners’ perception of this speaking habit.  Over the last several years, the use of vocal fry, particularly by young women, has garnered much attention.  One study by Anderson et al found that the women who spoke with vocal fry were deemed “less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, less attractive, and less hirable.” Notably, these negative perceptions were stronger for young women than young men.  Confusingly, however, another paper by Yuasa claims that the vocal fry pattern in young women was perceived as “hesitant, nonaggressive, and informal but also educated, urban-oriented, and upwardly mobile.”

This conflicting research has fueled a debate around the gender bias in the scrutiny of the speaking voice. Another study by  Irons and Alexander found that men actually spend more of their time speaking in vocal fry than women. And according to Stanford linguistics professor Penny Eckert, the use of vocal fry in men has been traditionally seen as a sign of “hyper-masculinity” and argues that women should not actively change their speaking patterns to fit societal pressures because as a society we police these patterns in women but not men. 

Upspeak

Upspeak is the pattern in which the speaker has a rising pitch at the end of their sentence, as is natural to do when asking a question.  Similarly to vocal fry, upspeak is often maligned as a “bad” speaking pattern, one in which the speaker sounds tentative or unsure of themself.  And like vocal fry, this criticism is often gendered in its nature. 

There is evidence that upspeak is used in times of uncertainty.  One study used the game show Jeopardy to study the use of upspeak.  The author found the contestants were more likely to use upseak when they answered a question incorrectly, perhaps suggesting their uncertainty.  Interestingly, the study found that women used more upspeak than men, and men used more upspeak “when surrounded by women contestants, and when correcting a woman contestant after she makes an incorrect response.”

Despite this common perception of upspeak, it is used for other purposes as well.  Most notably, it can be used in declarative statements to indicate the speaker is maintaining the speaking floor, signaling that the speaker has more to say.   In this form, it allows the audience to actively listen and prevents interruption. While interruption may be unlikely in a formal speaking environment, engaging the audience in active listening is certainly a goal.