Thursday, October 13, 2022

Uptalk and Punctuation

The phenomenon of uptalk was deplored when it first came in, as all language changes initiated by young women usually are until young men, then slightly older women, then middle-aged women in entertainment adopt the new words, syntax, pronunciation, or form. Then the old people who don't switch to this die off, grumbling, and the change is complete. I should find out if people who work with young women are early adopters or more likely to be rearguard defenders.  My guess is the former. There was, and likely still is, a prejudice against it as sounding unserious and tentative. Declaratives are preferred and young women were - and in many places still are - encouraged to switch to declaratives "or you sound like a little girl." Not great for an attorney or negotiator. But uptalk has already spread out into our expressiveness, and it will become standard.  It is more nuanced than mere uncertainty, as it signals "I would like to still keep the floor.  But if you need to break in, this would be a good spot." To signal that one has finished and invites others to speak, the standard declarative is used, giving that piece of speech a finality.

I have an anecdote about young women and language change that I will come back to in an update. Queen Elizabeth I factors in prominently.

There is also a change in punctuation that has showed up first in texting, of leaving off a final period. As hitting "send" does even more dramatically signal that the thought has ended, there is an efficiency to that. A young friend who manages a Chik-Fil-A and works with teenagers has learned to leave the period off the end of texts, because they perceive that he, their boss, is yelling at them and get nervous and defensive.  That's just how it looks to them now.  To those of us raised differently it just looks wrong and incomplete, even in a text. I have taken to intentionally leaving it off in texting, just to observe myself and my own responses to change.  Should be fun.

I wonder if the two are related? They both pertain to the end of sentences that would be declarative, and both are softeners of that. They might combine in some way going forward.

QE1 update.  Henry VIII used thee and thou, not "you."  But his daughter, the well-educated Elizabeth used "you" increasingly in her correspondence, starting as a young woman. She won, he is a dinosaur.  Young women lead language change.  I fancy that at the time a baron went to London to meet the important people, including the Pricess Elizbeth, and when he came home the Baroness asked him "So what is she like? What are we in for, here, if she becomes queen?"  "Well, she seems quite smart and determined, I think she might actually suit.  But there is one thing that bothers me.  She's one of those girrls who uses "you" instead of "thee."

The baronness is appalled.  "Someone needs to speak to these fluffy young women about how childish this sounds.  If she wants to be queen, she should try not to sound like a ten-year old!"

But Elizabeth won and they lost. Uptalk will win. Indeed, it may already have won.


12 comments:

Jonathan said...

"I wonder if the two are related?"

ISWYDT

I await the first female Navy admiral to go by Admiral Helen or something similar.

Christopher B said...

Maybe the same thing is now happening with emojis, specifically the thumbs-up?(h/t Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, link to Daily Mail. The list of email buzz phrases is also worth a click.). There was a lot of slagging Zoomers in the IP comments as expected but the rational proposed in the article is also "it's rude". I can see where they are coming from as I've been admonished about simply 'liking' a post but I'm torn between not doing anything and simply posting a platitude, which seems pretty cheap as well, especially when a post is about a problem situation or loss.

Any of these remote communication protocols have the issue of lacking the nonverbal cues that we use to more or less gracefully exit a conversation such as breaking eye contact or gesturing. They land uncomfortably between synchronous conversation and asynchronous communication like email.

Using. Periods. Like. This. could also be related.

Sponge-headed ScienceMan said...

Geez, I recall making fun of Valley Girl speak back in the early 80s. But I do have to admit that I am slightly put-off when a professional woman or someone like a female TV reporter uses Uptalk. My brain registers: "not as educated as I would have expected."

The linked article talks about Australian Uptalk but of course many Brits and Canadian tend to end a declarative statement with a (perhaps unconscious) questioning. "Eh?" leaps to mind.

Jonathan said...

If in doubt, the power move is usually to refrain from replying at all.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Jonathan, let me suggest that the Holy Spirit prompted that comment from you to me today.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ Sponge - uptalk is a real thing, among female academics definitely and even younger males at this point. I would be interested in Erin's take, teaching AP English at a suburban HS.

Ganzir said...

I wonder if I should start uptalking? Maybe talking like women will make them like me more? Like, people approve of people who share their quirks, yeah?

sykes.1 said...

Uptalking is for unserious people, children and, apparently now, young women. And soy boys.

Serious people/cultures take over and rule unserious people/cultures. Our future is more likely to be Islamic/Sharia tan woke.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ sykes. Buckle in. You are not wrong, but there is more to the story.

Grim said...

Then the old people who don't switch to this die off, grumbling...

The ones who do switch also die off, as eventually does everyone. Keeping current with fashion is much like eating healthy and exercising: there may be reasons to do it, but you're still going to die.

One of the things I value about getting older is not being expected to know, let alone keep up with, current fashions. I sometimes see articles about it; I think yesterday or so I saw one that using a 'thumbs up' emoji is now considered rude because old-fashioned. Who uses emojis? Children, that's who. And the children's children are now telling them how to do it. Thank God, those games are for younger people to worry about.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

This is true. But let me assure you that there are at least two levels beyond even this.

Erin said...

I love the flexibility of language to evolve! English teachers can be notoriously resistant to this, sadly. I think there's comfort in the surety of a set of memorized rules. One of my colleagues still insists on using the Warriner's Grammar books with 1981 copyright dates in them, bless her heart. I haven't noticed uptalking at school, but I could just be so used to it that it doesn't register. And I do remember Dad remarking when I was a teen that I tended to do it, and it was something he heard all the time in Newfoundland.

I'm not sure I can speak broadly to the gender divide (other than to note the obvious correlation that teenage girls are much more likely to be communicating prolifically than teenage boys are & therefore more likely to develop linguistic changes). But I definitely see youth culture pushing our language in general. I'm always curious to know how much I see is influenced by my students' ages (teen culture) & how much by their home culture. Many of my students are Asian, South Asian, or Middle Eastern, either as first generation Americans or as immigrants who moved to America as young children & speak another language at home or at the very least with extended family. We've actually had so many students coming into our district from Brazil that we've added Heritage Portuguese to our World Languages offerings for those who speak it conversationally but can't read or write it proficiently.

In general we see writers responding to the habits of readers. My AP Lang students just set up blogs we will use throughout the year to write & and give feedback to other Lang students around the country. We spent time talking about the changes we see in reading consumption, news or otherwise. Generally speaking, we're reading most of our information digitally. And it seems to be the younger the reader, the smaller the screen: my parents read on their big desktop screen, I'm on my smaller laptop, but my students stick primarily to phones and their school-issued iPads. Writers respond (in order to maintain attention & clarity) by creating more paragraph breaks in their writing and using block formatting instead of traditional double spacing and indents. Hyperlinks replace footnotes or parenthetical citations.

As our communication has grown more text-based and we lose the benefits of facial expression, intonation, etc., I love that teens are adding tonality through more than just emojis. And I can at least attest that I pick up on these new trends, recommendations, and rules more quickly than others my age. (I'm regularly single-spacing after my sentences, to my own surprise.) I know that the final period is grammatically correct, but I still have to consciously reject perceived passive-aggressiveness or sulkiness when Mom texts just "okay." to me. FYI, the "tears of joy" emoji is something "only old people use," the "thumbs up emoji" is seen as passive-aggressive by teens, and I guess only old people still end their texts in ellipses...