I’m curious about the views of this community on this topic. Many young women have speech patterns that, to my ear at least, sound unprofessional. Among those are (1) upspeak; (2) an overall vocal tentativeness; (3) a seemingly affected little-girl or valley-girl quality; and (4) vocal fry (sometimes adopted as a corrective to other issues).
At my old law firm, we would counsel talented young female lawyers to eliminate these speech patterns and would sometimes offer (expensive) coaching and/or communications training to those we considered worthy of the investment.
But now, in the media, I’ve been seeing and hearing numerous articles and broadcast segments decrying such interventions as sexist. The prevailing view seems to be women should be permitted to talk in the way they talk, and the preference for more authoritative speech patterns is somehow sexist.
My view is that at least some of these vocal patterns are themselves the result of sexist pressures on young women to act a certain way to be appealing to men and boys. So I view some of this training as a corrective to earlier sexist pressures. (Vocal fry doesn’t necessarily fall into this category).
A whole other topic is the CONTENT of women’s speech – such as Deborah Tannen’s theories about women’s tendencies to flatten hierarchies by putting themselves in the one-down position or apologizing as a social norm – but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m specifically talking about vocal quality.
The same thing we said to our sons: speak clearly and with confidence. Enunciate words clearly- don’t mumble. Look people in the eye when speaking to them. Don’t EVER substitute “blah, blah, blah” for actual words. Present ideas in an articulate fashion.
Our daughters have never “dumbed down” their speech patterns or content because they have always known that we value what they have to say equally with what our sons say. In present day climate, I feel as if women who have successfully graduated to professional positions such as you describe are probably not guilty of the speech patterns in question. It will be interesting to see how other posters respond.
I agree with both of you. And, both sexes, if from a region with a strong accent are sometimes coached to “tone down” their accents to sound more like “TV Talk”…what newscasters tend to use.
I agree with @notelling that some of the speech patterns that young women have adopted were done so to be sexually appealing to males. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard lesbian young women talk that way, but maybe I’m wrong.
Even men, who use an authoritative speech pattern in the workplace, often don’t talk that way at home or in casual settings. It seems (to me) that only the most “straight-laced” more formal men talk nearly the same way inside or outside the workplace.
I recall as a young attorney being scolded by the senior partner for not yelling at my secretary when we had a big deadline looming and he wanted all the secretaries to be working as hard and fast as possible. To me, it didn’t seem like a good idea to add stress to an already tough and challenging situation. I felt that all the clerical staff were working as hard as they could and more stress would cause mistakes we could ill-afford.
I have always cringed when people have voices that do not sound appropriate to the workplace, in the workplace. I wonder how the will fare in the work world and wonder about their ability to modulate their voice. Perhaps acting lessons and voice lessons may help. I know some attorneys who took both to help them in trial practice.
ha ha, as I was reading this Kristen Chenoweth came on a talk show. Good thing someone didn’t slap the baby voice out of her. Elle Woods too, come to think of it, lol
I have a very young sounding voice. Telemarketers often ask for my parent when they call. My opinion? It’s incredibly insulting that anyone thinks I ever cultivated my voice for attention from boys. My voice is my voice, whether written or spoken. It sounds deeper to my own ears than it does to others, unless I am listening to a recording. To change my voice would make me a fake, in my opinion. I’m grateful that I didn’t want a career or people in my life who insisted I change part of who I am and become a fake to be successful.
The natural timbre or native pitch of someone’s voice can’t be readily changed, but the things @nottelling is talking about (uptalking, vocal fry etc.) are just acquired habits, and habits can be broken or replaced. They aren’t some deep part of someone’s identity. When a habit starts to hurt your credibility in situations that matter to you, it’s fine to work on changing it.
In the future, the vocal mannerisms of young women today will sound just as absurd as the chirpy 50s-style Doris Day delivery that sounds so dated in films.
nottelling: Are you reading my mind? The Alabama sorority thread already had me thinking about this, but it seemed it would be such an off-topic discussion in the minds of most. It isn’t to me. Maybe you see the connection, too? When a blonde southern sorority woman goes to med or law school, she ties back her hair and modulates her voice. It’s a given.
Since I’ve refused to drop my southern accent, even when living in places where it prevents some taking me seriously, I have been thinking about this topic for decades and still don’t have an answer. At this point in time, my basic reaction is that the women of my generation have, through necessity, accommodated themselves to the male status quo in the workplace in order to be successful. That sometimes included changing their voices and speech. In my mind, giving up my accent would have been capitulating to a NE status quo. It was not an accent at all appealing to males in our social circle, though it might be to some males.
I have nieces and cousins, no daughters. A couple of them have always talked what we call in our family, “baby talk” and it annoys the majority of us. Combine it with a southern accent and sometimes men who married into the family get up and leave the room. They are late 20s, blonde, former sorority girls who have been very successful academically and now professionally. They only use these voices in a family setting or with close women friends. It becomes more and more fascinating to me as they get older, as sometimes it seems to me they are speaking dialect at home. It is their default, but they can’t use it out in the world and be taken seriously.
As someone who was born in NYC and now lives in the midwest I can tell you for sure accents can be a detriment. I got rid of mine. It wasn’t easy. I have a friend who is a speech and language pathologist that makes a very nice living in Miami doing accent reduction, mostly with first generation immigrants.
There’s another issue I have w young female professionals: their dress (or lack thereof).
There’s one female junior engineer in my office who wears 6 inch heels and miniskirts that barely cover her butt. She gets talked about by the other staff. I’m wondering if I should pull her aside and talk to her. She’s bright and nice, and I really hate to watch this career suicide.
We got into an argument/discussion with our daughter on this while on vacation. She argued that targeting women for vocal fry and upspeak is sexist. We responded that there are men who speak this way too, and they will have the same issues as women.
I can’t address the vocal fry thing – I’m still trying to understand that one, what it sounds like, why people are doing it. From the little I’ve heard about it, there are concerns that it could damage your vocal cords. My daughter suggested that vocal fry is in reaction to upspeak – that women who try to eliminate upspeak do vocal fry, so they are damned no matter what they do.
There is no question to me that upspeak can hurt the users. Ending every sentence with a question undermines your image of confidence and authority. I don’t care if you are a man or a woman, doing that in a professional setting has the potential to hurt you.
mom2twogirls, what we’re speaking about is different than the timbre of your voice, how high or low it is.
When girls and young women make a decision, consciously or not, to use voices that set them apart and identify them as part of a group, that is pretty interesting to me. They become a female tribe. imho.
In retropect, I am very glad that I sent my kids to an elementary school (public) that focused on public speaking and elocution. By the time, they went to middle school, most of the kids, even the shy ones and the ESOL kids were very comfortable with public speaking. Many high school teachers said that they could spot the kids from X elementary by the confident way they spoke. IMO, too few schools focus on public speaking.
Watch the movie “In a World.” It’s streaming on Netflix. It’s about a woman trying to break into the voiceover industry. The lead character does voice coaching to make ends meet. At one point she is coaching a young attorney who can’t find work. She asks her if maybe her voice could be holding her back. The young attorney answers in the affirmative, admitting that she “sounds like a sexy baby.”
I remember years ago listening to an interview coach say that the worst issue with speaking for women was the tendency to end every statement with a rise in voice scale at the end of every sentence. This makes a statement sound like a question and makes the speaker sound not sure of that statement. It sounded like good advice to me.
The Alabama sorority thread already had me thinking about this, but it seemed it would be such an off-topic discussion in the minds of most. It isn’t to me. Maybe you see the connection, too? When a blonde southern sorority woman goes to med or law school, she ties back her hair and modulates her voice. It’s a given.