Do Verbal Tics Matter for Girls and Women?
There has been an interesting debate going on about how women/girls speak.
One issue is how women in the workplace tend to apologize more "I don't
mean to bother you but wanted to ask...." or preface with qualifiers
like "just."
This may be true but I think that women have to have faith in their education and experience and not feel like they can't speak up at work without a qualifier. And there is surely a difference between verbal tics and actual speaking style (which is probably a combo of parents, area where you were raised and generation).
But I absolutely hate "upspeak" or "uptalk" with younger women. I can't take anyone seriously who ends nearly every sentence as a question. (I had this happen in a hospital with two female residents and I took their supervisor aside and told her to help them to get out of this habit because it compromises their professional demeanor)
This article at NY Magazine says that men do all these things. My experience is that I find very few men ever engage in these speaking habits and that this is largely a female issue. But they say that if you strip all the "just", "like", etc. out of female language:
This may be true but I think that women have to have faith in their education and experience and not feel like they can't speak up at work without a qualifier. And there is surely a difference between verbal tics and actual speaking style (which is probably a combo of parents, area where you were raised and generation).
But I absolutely hate "upspeak" or "uptalk" with younger women. I can't take anyone seriously who ends nearly every sentence as a question. (I had this happen in a hospital with two female residents and I took their supervisor aside and told her to help them to get out of this habit because it compromises their professional demeanor)
This article at NY Magazine says that men do all these things. My experience is that I find very few men ever engage in these speaking habits and that this is largely a female issue. But they say that if you strip all the "just", "like", etc. out of female language:
It quickly became apparent that if we were to take the advice of all of our detractors — carefully enunciating, limiting our likes, moderating our tone to avoid vocal fry — our podcast would sound very different. It would be stripped of its cadence and its meaning; it would lose the casual, friendly tone we wanted it to have and its special feeling of intimacy. It wouldn’t be ours anymore.No, it won't and millions of women who don't have these kinds of tics are evidence of that.
Comments
"Note, by the way, that here is yet another scion of the Bush clan who was inexplicably brought up speaking Ebonics: “What the consequences… is?” Say what?"
-NNNCr
How we speak is both reflective of our own confidence level socially and our level of perception about how to get what we want from the listener. I have colleagues who can twist principals, IT specialists, custodians around their fingers. Man, I wish I could do that!
I do use the poor little me thing sometimes on the phone with men I will never deal with again. Because, sadly, it works.
-goose/gander
My point being, how can people distinguish between people who are confident and knowledgeable and those who really doubt what they are saying themselves if they can't take their words and inflections at face value? The rising inflection at the end, the apologies... those indicate uncertainty with what you are saying. Why shouldn't people believe the way you present yourself? (The "crackle" thing is just one of those annoying fads--I don't put it in the same category.)
(Note that I don't doubt my opinion on this in the least--By typing "I don't know," I was just trying to soften any sense of confrontation goose/gander may have experienced from my words.) <- I went back and bolded "just." Look I did it again!
BUT Maureen is right; playing dumb sometimes is useful. But that's different from everyday speech.
Goose, there's point there for sure. I'm not sure I take young men all that much more seriously because of their speech but I have a hard time following a young woman with tics. I don't think they are dumb but they sound dumb. There's a difference. In the case of the two residents, my husband's life was on the line so yes, I want people who sound confident in what they are doing.
-LL
NE Parent
Sure there was sexism, but no worse than in any other job. And I knew 100% exactly what the pay chart was - I knew what every guy was making, and what I was making, and it was completely independent of gender, based only on rank and time in service. Equal pay for equal work. And no uptalking.
You had to be able to shoot the bull, but that was a more social thing, more like trash talking or smack talking (and I did struggle with that in anything more than the barest of superficial exchanges), but it wasn't a female thing. There were men who also struggled with finding that level of "camaraderie" and women who were great at it - it seemed to depend a bit on sports background, maybe.
Frankly, I wish more female students were advised about the military as an excellent choice for college - ROTC and the officer training programs are wonderful leadership opportunities, and there's also real college money there.
Signed: JustTalking
My 8th grade English teacher excised all of the "I think..." and "I believe..." starts to the sentences in my essays saying "If you wrote it the readers will know that it's what you think and you believe. These introductory tics weaken your writing." I took them out of my writing - and I took them out of my speech. As a result, I am a much more forceful writer and speaker.
I sometimes consciously add them when I intentionally soften my speech for tact's sake.
I agree with goose/gander that we should consider the merit of the content and thought in a person's speech (or writing) without regard to their presentation style, but that's not a particularly human expectation. I work at it. I struggle with it. But it is hard.
We are the inheritors of the Greek idea of logos which equated eloquence with truth. Clarity of speech is equated with clarity of thought and those who write and speak in Standard English are granted more credibility and authority. That's just the way it is. I try to work against that bias, but it is work.
I think it is fair for speakers who would like listeners to do the work of overlooking their presentation style, to do their part and take on the work of cleaning up their presentation style.
See? I could have written that without "I think" at the start, but it would seem less like I was really trying to find a middle ground.
OTOH I have said things I know to be true that people have denied or challenged without even respecting me enough to provide a source or reference ( counter-arguments: "dysgraphia doesn't exist, it's just that your child is lazy;" "everyone should be on the same diet even if our bodies have differing allergies and metabolism rates;" , it's like they just deny or challenge for the fun of it. I do not know why they do that, it seems that in some cultures ignorance is a badge of honor.
I also don't get how work colleagues can feel intimidated by someone who doesn't use verbal tics, if the work colleagues themselves don't use verbal tics. How do adults enter the work force with the expectation everyone will conform to their limitations?
I don't think anybody said that, did they? Perhaps I read too fast.
The cited double standard about putting people in their place, because to accept that they can have the same delivery of expression without weakening with modifier would put some in their "oogy space." I'd be surprised if secure people who weren't intimidated resented their conversation partners speaking the way they themselves did.
--Christina
HP
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425608745/from-upspeak-to-vocal-fry-are-we-policing-young-womens-voices
HP