Pet peeve-thy name is Vocal Fry!!!

[iris lilies]

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

[iris lilies]

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.....

This was hilarious!

[catherine]

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.

[Packy]

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.

[KayLR]

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.

[iris lily]

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.

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.