Study suggests "the bias is real but socially constructed, rather than grounded in how women actually sound."
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Men use “vocal fry” more than women, counter to stereotype
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Upspeak, like many non-condescending quirks of speech, can be made condescending with application of sufficient quantities of sarcasm and scorn.
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Sure. So all upspeak would be condescending if all of it had sufficient quantities of sarcasm and scorn applied.
Color predominant landscape vs color predominant eyeglasses comes to mind at this point.
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Every time I hear someone use vocal fry I want to punch them in the face. It's not an endearing trait, it's a social flag to let everyone know that you're a f*#@ing moron.
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Oddly, I don't give a shit about vocal fry but I find your post perfectly expresses my feelings about your post.
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Digital_Dreamer
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I always thought that the controversy regarding vocal fry wasn't simply the pitch, as alluded to in the "research," but the nihilistic, "devil may care" attitude behind the one speaking.
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I get a bit confused here, there seem to be many different ways vocal fry can be present.
Some (all?) seem offensive to some people, but is it the actual vocal fry or maybe an additional attitude that may be present together with a sociolect?
- a feature of the main language (finnish)
- in older sociolects (posh englishmen)
- in newer sociolects (adopted from popular media and friends)
- a natural voice
- sign of aging vocal chords
Some (all?) seem offensive to some people, but is it the actual vocal fry or maybe an additional attitude that may be present together with a sociolect?
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I came in here thinking huh that’s interesting.
But a sample of 25 men and 24 women bilingual French Canadians public figures nearly all living in lower Quebec primarily pulled from podcasts and tv interviews?
And where they counted individual instances of vowel vocal fry not the non-stop droning vocal fry in the stereotypical “valley girl voice” that people actually find annoying?
That’s somehow representative of all men and women and confirmation of social bias against women using vocal fry?
Is this a fucking joke?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447025000427
But a sample of 25 men and 24 women bilingual French Canadians public figures nearly all living in lower Quebec primarily pulled from podcasts and tv interviews?
And where they counted individual instances of vowel vocal fry not the non-stop droning vocal fry in the stereotypical “valley girl voice” that people actually find annoying?
That’s somehow representative of all men and women and confirmation of social bias against women using vocal fry?
Is this a fucking joke?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447025000427
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It doesn't bother me. Uptalk does though. It doesn't bother me so much if I know the person and am familiar with them and their speech patterns. But when I am talking to someone I don't know that well, or at all, which is most of my working day, I just need to know when something that sounds like a question is actually a question.
Seconded.
And I live there. Drives my language processing crazy - I have found myself answering these non-questions especially when structurally they were questions (eg "Why don't you just bugger off." )
I originally thought it was a spectrum thing and the speakers were unaware of their unusual intonation but became pretty obvious that was not the case.
Until perhaps a decade ago it seemed mostly a young female thing and some other non binary groups but now I hear it from a lot of younger males. Decidedly (sub)cultural.
I suppose if I wanted to be an even more irritating obnoxious old git than I already am, I could start using Yoda speak. (Start using Yoda speak, I could ?
"Just bugger off will I ?"
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I am a bass; started singing at church and school choirs in 1968. As you age, you end up sounding like McCartney on SNL last night…whispery, airish and somewhat unstable.
After decades away, I started singing barbershop competitively (it’s a thing). At first, my voice was not very strong nor could I hold a post more than 8-10 seconds. AND, my lowest register was bacon-y…fried garbage.
Understand that in barbershop, vibrato is non-existent, oversinging is usually wrong, and pitch is judged in centi-tones. So fry is typically bad. If I am unsure I can nail a low note, I lean into the mic…compressing the instrument cavity…and produce at a lower volume. 99% of the time, a clean note that will match the other 3 voices and lock the chord.
What I have since learned…5 years or so now…is that breathing work is required. I do daily workouts with deep breathing exercises then SOVT training (Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract) with my vocal warmups; scales, arpeggios, etc.
These days, I sing quite well and have enormous presence and reserve. I can hold a note 35-40 seconds. For 70, I will take it.
At some point, I will fry sooner and start to lose presence. After that, the airy stuff and then I quit.
After decades away, I started singing barbershop competitively (it’s a thing). At first, my voice was not very strong nor could I hold a post more than 8-10 seconds. AND, my lowest register was bacon-y…fried garbage.
Understand that in barbershop, vibrato is non-existent, oversinging is usually wrong, and pitch is judged in centi-tones. So fry is typically bad. If I am unsure I can nail a low note, I lean into the mic…compressing the instrument cavity…and produce at a lower volume. 99% of the time, a clean note that will match the other 3 voices and lock the chord.
What I have since learned…5 years or so now…is that breathing work is required. I do daily workouts with deep breathing exercises then SOVT training (Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract) with my vocal warmups; scales, arpeggios, etc.
These days, I sing quite well and have enormous presence and reserve. I can hold a note 35-40 seconds. For 70, I will take it.
At some point, I will fry sooner and start to lose presence. After that, the airy stuff and then I quit.
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I pleases me surprisingly immensely to realize I don't believe I've ever heard Sam Altman speak, a status I hope to retain for a lot longer.
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Edubfromktown
Ars Praetorian
I despise hearing it and tune-out/ignore immediately.
The only thing worse: "what's in yerrrr wallet" (Jennifer Garner) crapital one commercial or Ray Ferraro's high pitched/whiney NHL hockey commentary.
The only thing worse: "what's in yerrrr wallet" (Jennifer Garner) crapital one commercial or Ray Ferraro's high pitched/whiney NHL hockey commentary.
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I've never heard of the stereo type mentioned in the headline... which the headline claims is backwards... despite the content of the research not being that broad. So the whole thing is a bit of a mess. It goes from woman use it more, to men use it more, to actually maybe we don't have evidence to make gender based claims about it.
Unfortunately, the A-B testing for best headline only measures click-through, not clarity.
Unfortunately, the A-B testing for best headline only measures click-through, not clarity.
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Studies like these should be taken with a huge grain of salt because they are nearly always the result of motivated reasoning - the author wants to prove a hypothesis and sets up experiments that are heavily weighted toward the desired outcome then p-hacks the hell out of any results that fit their biases.
Not picking on this study in particular - studies in the social sciences are terrible across the board.
Not picking on this study in particular - studies in the social sciences are terrible across the board.
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And the thing is you could actually do a good test of this hypothesis - for example you could take voices of both genders containing vocal fry - modulate them to the point that they are gender-indeterminate and have actors of either gender lip-sync to them.
You could also take voices containing vocal fry - find which ones people rated annoying - then digitally remove/reduce the vocal fry while leaving the other aspects of the accent intact and see if people still rate it annoying.
There are lots of ways you could investigate this phenomenon that would be really interesting.
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I think the problem here is that the annoyance factor of creaky voice is related to pitch.
This kind of tonal breakup appears in Darth Vader's voice. But I don't think people even notice it, much less associate it with annoying vocal fry, because it's much lower octave.
It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Transpose that several octaves lower and most like it won't be so annoying.
IMO, this isn't gender bias, it the simple physical fact, that creaky higher pitched sounds are more irritating than creaky lower pitched ones.
There are also higher pitched male speakers, who will also produce more more irritating creaky voice, than James Earl Jones's creaky voice.
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As a Second Bass, I can confirm I can easily "fry" my voice by dropping it low. Doesn't really hurt, and I rarely use it in normal speech, but if I'm trying to emphasize something, yeah.
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Again that's a testable hypothesis - you can see ihow people rate higher pitch fry vs lower pitch fry with no visual cues against how they rate them appearing to come from male or female actors.
It is somewhat complicated because we sex voices by more than just pitch. Young boys in anime are almost always voiced by women for obvious practical reasons but some of the casting choices are unconvincing while others can fool your ears into hearing young boy and not adult woman.
Even so it should be possible to construct experiments that disentangle the various factors.
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