Funnily enough I started watching another Lynda.com course (I binge watch these things now that I know I can log in with my library card number), this time "Communicating With Confidence" by Jeff Ansell, and he mentions Uptalk in one of the videos. According to him, this style of speech communicates a lack of authority, and he cites research by the linguist Robin Lakoff who proposed that woman's speech patterns differ from men's in a way that reflects the power dynamic of gender in society. In other words, women have been conditioned to speak a certain way because of a power structure which views them as weaker than men. By way of example she cites:
- Women do use paraphrases like “kind of” and “sort of” much more often than men do, this is called “hedging” which is a term that was primarily used by Lakoff’s ex-husband George Lakoff
- Women tend to use ‘empty’ adjectives or adjectives that are more common for women’s speech, like “divine”, “adorable”, “gorgeous”, “terrific”
- Women’s speech is often super polite and contains a lot of politeness-phrases like “… if it is not too much to ask”, “Would you mind …? or “Is it ok …?” that state wariness
- Coincidentally women tend to apologize more than men by saying things like “I’m sorry, but I think that …” when men would just come up with their opinion
- Women do not speak very frequently and they barely use any coarse or explicit language
- Besides the hyper-correct (prestige) grammar and pronunciation, women turn declarative statements or imperatives into questions (“This is the right button, isn’t it?”); Lakoff came up with a new term for this: tag questions
- Women tend to state indirect requests so that they must not say directly what they want: “Hm, I think I’m hungry” for “I want something to eat”
- And last but not least women ‘speak in italics’ by using small words like “very”, “quite”, “like” or “so” to fill gaps and to emphasize other words
Mind you, this was based on research she did in the mid 70's - I think gender divisions have blurred somewhat since then (but not entirely), so you'll hear some guys displaying similar vocal traits these days. I hear a lot of younger guys overusing the word "like," but I have to say I hear young women displaying this trait more often. I've often felt that "like" is used as a filler word and is symptomatic of lips which move faster than the owner's brain. People are afraid to stop and let their brain catch up because they feel like any pause in their speech is going to be an open invitation for someone else to start talking
