Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

What's up with so much up-speak or gargle-like voices at the end of spoken sentences, particularly among younger women today? This was not the case a decade or more ago.

For instance, when a declarative sentence is spoken, the last couple of words are spoken in a higher pitch as one would expect with a legitimate question, e.g., "Her hair was a kind of dishwater blond." In this example, the tone of the speaker's voice starts to rise on the last two words. It's a statement, but the speaker makes it sound like a question, and is spoken in such a way that the other party is expected to respond to the statement as though it were a question.

The other increasingly common "trend" among speakers, again I notice it most often among women under age 40, is just the opposite vocal inflection at the end of sentences. A sentence will start out to be spoken very clearly, but by the last few words the speaker will notably drop in pitch while taking on a gargle-like or "gravelly" tone, almost as though her throat is tightening up when under stress. This makes it difficult for the hearer (at least for me) to understand the last few words of the spoken sentence.

In both cases -- up-speak and gargle-speak -- when I listen to such a person speak, not only are all the words difficult to hear at times because they are spoken in an unnatural way, but I feel like the speaker is somehow trying to manipulate me to unwittingly agree with her implied viewpoints on topics through these techniques.

In the first case of up-speak, the speaker is attempting to call into question and force the listener to agree with a fact or situation that she herself questions or believes, and clearly wants to the other party to believe as fact as well. As such she is trying to force the listener to either A) not respond, which would validate her up-speak "question," or B) have the listener provide some type of non-verbal acknowledgment of agreement such as a nod of the head.

In the second case of "gargle-speak," the speaker doesn't really seem to care whether or not the last few words in her sentence are heard or comprehended by the other party. Rather, she has made her point in the first part of the sentence, or, alternatively may be hiding or trying to gloss over other important information in the last half of the sentence not really wanting the other party to clearly hear those words.

What's your take on this? Is it just me observing this, or are their others observing this somewhat recent phenomenon?

Keith Lundquist
(and yes, I am a 50+ year-old male)