Using Creaky Voice

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chip Moll in Granbury, Texas.

Hi, Chip.

Hello, Chip.

What’s going on?

Well, I had a question about a speech trait that I’m not sure if anyone else has even noticed it or not.

I know there’s certain terms for way words are said, like if you’re from the South, there’s a thing called a diphthong.

The only way I can reference it is, I think it was derived from belly girl speak.

And I’ve heard it from females, never from males, and only in the U.S. In English.

But at the end of the sentence, the voice kind of trails off.

It gets lower and lower, and as it gets to the end of the sentence, they sort of begin to sort of grackle at the end of it.

And I was just curious if anyone else had noticed that.

My wife thinks I’m obsessed with it, and I’m the only one that hears it.

You know, when you think you’ve seen a ghost and nobody else sees it, it’s kind of frustrating, right?

I would know.

Other people have seen this ghost, Chip.

Oh.

There’s a term for this. Actually, there’s a bunch of terms for this.

It’s called creaky voice.

Okay.

C-R-E-A-K-Y voice, creaky voice.

It’s not derived from Valley Girl Speak, which is not really a phenomenon that any linguist or lexicographer would recognize.

There’s no such thing as Valley Girl Speak.

There are certain trends in youth speak and certain trends in regional language, but there’s no such thing as Valley Girl Speak.

It exists only in that album.

There were Moon Unit, Zappa, did that various language.

But what we do find is that there’s some language and some language habits that are associated with gender, with class, with education, and with location in terms of where they live in the country.

And so this is kind of what you’re noticing here.

And in the United States, women do tend to use creaky voice more than men.

Now, men use it.

Men use it to do things like enhance the masculinity of whatever they’re saying or whatever they’re doing.

Kind of lower their voice a little bit and make it sound, you know, it’s just an obvious way.

But women don’t do that necessarily to make themselves seem masculine.

Although there was one study that studied young Latina women in gangs where the researcher, how shall I put this, suggested that it might be possible that in order to attain or keep some kind of status within the gang that they were lowering their voices and talking and kind of creaky.

But what you generally find that when they do this, it kind of is balanced out on the other side by falsetto.

You have these two different ranges of your tone, the high and the low, that you use in given situations to kind of reinforce a point that you want to make.

And now this point can vary. It’s all contextual.

But does any of this kind of ring a bell?

Do you find that when you hear young women using this, that they are kind of stressing a particular kind of content or a particular kind of statement?

Not exactly.

And I’ve noticed or I’ve tried to notice whether it’s for emphasis or not.

And I’ve not really picked up on that.

Well, Chip, can you give us an example of what kind of context you’d hear this in?

Well, there was an interview with the Olsen twins, Mary Kay and Ashley.

And Ashley doesn’t do it, but very, very seldom.

And Mary Kay, on the other hand, does it almost all the time.

Really?

Yes.

And you have several announcers on public radio that the announcers do it.

Really?

And it’s, like I say, it’s at the end of the sentence and it trails off and as it gets to the very end, it goes, like you say, creaky.

Well, is this like Bill Clinton telling me he feels my pain?

Right.

And you kind of hit on one of the things there that this is a generalization that perhaps with later study might not be borne out.

But one of the things that has been proposed is that creaky voice is a little more common in situations where you want to indicate some kind of familiarity, some kind of intimacy, some kind of friendship in a kind of non-imperative way.

That is, you don’t want to force this kind of mood upon somebody else, but you want to just let them know that it’s how you’re feeling.

That’s the way I perceived it, yes.

You faced it exactly right.

Wow.

Well, who knew, Chip, this is going to be like when I hear a new word for the first time and then I hear it everywhere?

Creaky voice.

Yeah, I’m going to start hearing creaky voice everywhere.

And maybe I’m going to hear the Olsen twins every day or something.

I don’t know.

Well, it is one of those things.

Once you’re aware of this, where somebody kind of is talking and they go like this and talk like that, you’re going to start hearing it.

You’re going to hear it everywhere.

Thanks a lot, Chip.

Thank you.

I feel vindicated.

You’ve got a great ear for language, buddy.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Congrats.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

Good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Creaky voice.

Some of the best papers I’ve ever seen where all of the linguists and mexicographers in the room kind of sat up straight in their chair at these language conferences were about creaky voice.

Oh, my God.

There’s tons of stuff about language that’s relatively unexplored, and this is one of those things where some work has been done but not a great deal.

Bring on your questions. Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.