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Anyone else annoyed by this? You know, when a young women starts out speaking with a full voice and ends up in a croak towards the end? Ugh. Now I notice it everywhere. Sing out Louise!!!
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/vid...al-fry/6g24b6c
(there's a short ad at the start of the video)
yep, I've heard it, just didn't realize it's a trend. I find it preferable to the affectation making a statement using intonation of a question. That's drives me batty.
But just talking plain like is the best choice.
http://sausandesigns.com/forum/images/smilies/puke.gifLife, and the many things people adopt and pick-up, never fails to surprise me. The problem nowadays, people have way too much time on their hands and the media is way too out there.
At any rate, I was listening to a great radio broadcast a few weeks back, and there was a women on the program doing the vocal-fry thing, and I had to turn the program off.
Mrs-M, love your smiley! :D
It is great isn't it, Tradd. :) It's one of my favourites.
What a difference from the way women spoke in the 40s--at least in the movies. I believe that speech pattern was called American Standard Theatre speech, which is the pattern they trained people on if they were going to be actors or broadcasters, etc. The tones were so round and full. Actually, I think elocution was a subject regularly taught in schools--like penmanship. Wow, two disciplines that have become completely as archaic as Greek or Latin. Now we're reduced to vocal fry.
Well said. http://sausandesigns.com/forum/image...es/2mo5pow.gifQuote:
Originally posted by Catherine.
Now we're reduced to vocal fry.
My three twenty-something nieces do the vocal-fry thing. I didn't know there was a term for it. They pair vocal fry with ending a sentence as a question. It's funny in that I have twenty-something nephews, and now that I think about it, they don't do the vocal fry thing. Weird!
So it's not just the whisky and cigarettes...?
My teenage DSD does it, even though I didn't know there was a name for it. She pairs that with trailing off into words that don't mean anything ("whatever, whatever, blah, blah, blah.....") and so you are left trying to decipher whether she actually MEANS anything by her communication, and, if so, WHAT she might mean. Her dad is really good at making her define her reference points so we can tell if her brain is working or not.
Hehehe.......gravelly, growly, whatever whatever.....
Well, I have to say that I do not like films from the 40's because everything seems so mannered, 'specially the way that women talk. That and their hair. oh yeah, and the giant shoulder pads.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
I watched the clip and I honestly had trouble hearing what vocal fry actually was. I didn't detect it. I don't know any young women so I'm not sure I've heard it in real life either. Maybe I need to watch the clip again...
They said it's a woman only thing but I've noticed it in men as well. There is one preacher on the radio that anytime I skip over that station and hear him even for 15 seconds it drives me over the edge crazy. There is some commercial on TV with a young woman, I think she's talking about a school program she's gone through and she does it.
My vocal coaches in high school and college would have killed us if we talked that way.
Ok, meta perspective here... I love this! What a fascinating insight into how women mirror each other & connect with the group. We are both socialized and have the hormonal profiles to be relational. This is a fantastic example of the group bonding that especially young women engage in.
We all had our analogs to this behavior, and just like this characteristic, I bet we were unconcious of our group bonding behaviors. I am also interested to know if this vocal trend is cross cultural. The women in the vid were all middle class white women.
Ya know, as much as I adore This American Life, there's quite a bit of fry going on there too. It's always kind of bugged me how the contributors on there all sort of sound the same.
I had to laugh when I read this! There is a vocal technique used by some men in Russian Orthodoxy when they chant a Scripture reading, called "up from the grave." No, I am not kidding! Usually the deep, deep basses do this. They start very low, "down in their toes," as I call it, and then go progressively higher. Sometimes they misjudge the length of a reading and well, sound like they're either a strangled cat or they've been gelded. ;-) It's nothing but sheer performance and takes away from the service. You don't see it too often here in the States, but I was at a service once and heard it. But I've seen plenty of YouTube videos. Makes me laugh.
I agree. So far, to name just a few, we have seen or rather heard Valley Girl, Joisey Girl, Nasal Nanny speak, Cyndi Lauper-like cutsie speak, Rosie Perez raspy sweet ghetto speak and Jackie Kennedy rich little girl wispy voice all being emulated by segments of the population at one time or another. Popular culture and media presentation both bring them into being and hasten their demise.Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
Cadence, intonation, vocal stresses, even vocabulary, are all learned social/cultural induced esthetics.
Nothing new but very interesting to watch evolve.
What a kindly take on teenaged girls! I on the other hand thought "Buncha brainless ninnies!" One woman's "relational" is another one's "herd-like.":laff:Quote:
Originally Posted by redfox
(And yes, I know teenagers are about as individualistic as minnows. I can remember that far back.)
I wasn't immediately clear on what "vocal fry" was. I kind of had an idea. Then I walked through the kitchen where I caught Amy Goodman on KPTK. :idea:
She has a voice that conveys such world-weariness that you expect her to topple off her chair in a full swoon at any moment--the cumulative weight of the misery in the world being such a burden and all. Sisyphus probably had vocal fry, come to think of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ26N5Uz410
Before I read this thread I had never even heard of vocal fry, but I was thinking of you guys big time and had to bite my tongue when my son's girlfriend's friend came for Super Bowl tonight, and she had the mixture of vocal fry and Valley Girl BIG TIME. I couldn't believe it. It was like a caricature talking between the gutteral growls and every sentence being stated in the form of a question. I thought I was seeing a Saturday Night Live skit.
Anna Wintour (Vogue editor). Listening to her makes one long for a lozenge.
I am resurrecting this old thread because This American Life yesterday featured "complaints to NPR on the preponderance of vocal fry amongst their radio voices." The story was this: a lot of female NPR voices display vocal fry. Many listeners complain to NPR about that. When NPR conducted a poll they found that it was only older listeners who were bugged by it.
Moral of the story: it's a trend among the youth, us old fogies don't count, just shut up you all.
I will remember this the next time our NPR station comes to me with their hand out. Apparently, even Ira Glass has some fry in his voice at times. Mimicking teenage girls, Ira?
Look, I get teenage herd behavior and bonding rituals and etc, but these are professional radio voices. Why they feel they are exempt from Standard American Speech is beyond me. Even acknowledging that Standard American Speech changes over time, this is non-standard. This is cliquish. It is stupid.
A bit of Googling shows all kinds of defense of this problem, putting it down to female discrimination in the workplace. Way to go girls, give yourself yet another handicap in the workplace
This was hilarious!Quote:
Originally Posted by leslieann
I tried the link in the OP in order to understand exactly what a vocal fry is, but it's not available anymore, so I googled and found this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsE5mysfZsY
Actually, this one is better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEqVgtLQ7qM
Wow, so timely! This past weekend I just attended a business event and there were two 20-something professional women there who did the vocal fry in spades, and it was kind of interesting, but mostly annoying. It's like there's a special accent for young women. I noticed my daughter is edging towards that type of speech pattern, which she's never had before, and I want to tell her to cut it out, but she's an adult now, so I guess I'll just take the clipped speech patterns I learned from watching 50s TV and movies and slink away.
Okay: What has happened is the croaky "vocal fry" has superceded the Val Gal mannerism of ending statements with a vocalization that makes any statement sound like a question. Even though it isn't? It(vf) makes them sound more assertive, maybe? All that stuff is Callyfornya, prolly borrowed from Stoners, man. See? Just be glad they don't for some crazy reason start emulating the speech patterns of Sarrah Pailin, Ya know? Way up north in Iowa, many, many years ago, various middle-aged businessmen would do their special "vocal fry", but not necessarily at the end of a sentence. Hope thatr helps you some. Thankk Mee.
I've noticed that for quite a while on This American Life and other PBS programs, too...thought I was the only one irked by it. But hey, I'm a fogie. I think they sound pretentiously fatigued. Ha!
I think we can thank Brittney Spears for it. It's been around since she was in her heyday.
One speech pathologist out there on the web made long explanations about how vocal fry is an attempt by young women to sound more authoritative and with a deeper voice.Quote:
Originally Posted by KayLR
But KayLR, I think you are more in the right. Fatigued, bored with life as in being too cool to live and with lots of ennui--that's the province of teenage girls.