Fry up

Over the summer, you might have read about vocal fry; that’s the kind of deliberately croaky voice demonstrated here by my favourite sit-com teenager, Dalia in Suburgatory.  Recent coverage of vocal fry has all the features of typical media stories on language and gender, and is a great example of why we should be sceptical when reading mainstream media coverage of linguistic issues.   Reading and analysing mainstream media coverage of linguistic issues is, of course, something  A2 students will need to do in your exam; you’ll also need to create your own piece for your intervention coursework.

 

First, newspapers will pick up on a recent bit of linguistic research, or maybe something they've seen mentioned on Twitter or YouTube.  Journalists are particularly keen on using headlines which express a clear and simple difference between men and women, so they will either reduce complex, nuanced findings to simplistic ‘men do this/women do that’ headlines like this, or base an article around a flawed bit of research like this.   The wonderful Deborah Cameron outlines this process at length in her snappily titled blog post (which btw would make a great style model for your intervention) ‘How to Write a Bullshit Article About Women’s Language’.

In the case of vocal fry, it seems that reporters noticed a story in the academic publication ‘Journal of Voice’.    Enterprising journalists realised they could write a story that combined celebrity click-bait with a ‘men-and-women-are-different’ story and so produced headlines like this featuring tabloid darlings like Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears.   There was even more mileage in the story when media outlets realised they could use the story to lecture women about how they need to speak more like men, and to blame their failure to do this for inequalities in education and the workplace.  Even feminist writers in respected, ‘serious’ newspapers got in on the act, presenting the story as a rallying call to young women; stop talking like a weak and feeble girl!

Never mind the fact that the original research only looked at young women, and so provided no evidence that only young women use vocal fry.   Never mind the easily demonstrable fact that men use vocal fry too, as shown in this brilliant post.   Never mind the fact that the original research only looked at young women, and so provided no evidence that only young women use vocal fry.  Never mind the fact that vocal fry is only seen as a sign of weakness when women use it.

The lesson here is not to take media coverage of women’s language (or, indeed, any linguistic issue) at face value.    Instead, do a bit of digging and reading around.  And if you want a different perspective on women’s language, you can always rely on Professor Cameron.

Nappies, dummies, baby wipes and elocution lessons?

There's a nice, brief post on yesterday's Independent Voices pages by Ellen E.Jones about accents. In it, she responds to a news story about posh parents paying for private tutors to "correct" the speech patterns of their poor little darlings, who have picked up "incorrect" forms from their foreign nannies.

Jones makes some good points, which relate closely to what we've been looking at in recent A2 English Language lessons, about attitudes to different accents, and notes that the once-sanctified RP accent is now just as likely to provoke hostile reactions among many people as strong regional accents did among the polite classes in years gone by.

The real folly of elocution training is premised on the myth of the “non-accent”. This is a delusion that some people entertain which suggests that while Scouse/Cockney/French accents are cuddly/aggressive/sexy (delete according to your prejudice), one’s own RP English does not count as an accent all. I’ve got bad news: it does. And it’s equally likely to be the subject of snap judgements – just ask poor old, posh old Benedict Cumberbatch. So your child may emerge from elocution lessons talking proper, but they will still have an accent – the accent of someone whose parents were silly enough to pay for elocution lessons.

It's interesting that, for many people, RP is now a rather antiquated and stuffy accent to use, with estimates from linguists suggesting that as little as 3-4% of the UK population actually uses RP. Estuary English, regional varieties such as Geordie, Scouse and Brummie are still stigmatized by some, but increasingly seen as more honest and genuine.

What we don't know is if these regional varieties still attract - as Ellen Ryan put it - status or solidarity: do we like the apparent warmth and honesty of regional varieties but still only really trust the voice of power, the voice of the posh?

Today's Word of Mouth picked up the theme of accents in a really timely way, interviewing a number of people about their perceptions of their own accents and how others view them, as well as addressing the issue of accent reduction. You can listen (for a week, at least) to this episode here.

HT to Sally Flower for Daily Mail story