View source for High rising terminal

{{Short description|Intonation pattern in some varieties of English}}
[[File:Example of Uptalk Used for Grounding.wav|thumb|Example of uptalk used for grounding: "I'm a transfer student, from [[El Paso Community College|EPCC]]". Here "EPCC" is a college that the speaker thinks the listener probably knows about, but she is seeking confirmation before continuing.]]
{{English phonology topics}}
The '''high rising terminal''' ('''HRT'''), also known as '''rising inflection''', '''upspeak''', '''uptalk''', or '''high rising intonation''' ('''HRI'''), is a feature of some variants of English where [[declarative sentence]]s can end with a rising pitch similar to that typically found in [[yes–no question]]s. HRT has been claimed to be especially common among younger speakers and women, though its exact [[sociolinguistics|sociolinguistic]] implications are an ongoing subject of research.

== Intonational characteristics==

Empirically, one report proposes that HRT in [[American English]] and [[Australian English]] is marked by a high tone (high pitch or high [[fundamental frequency]]) beginning on the final accented syllable near the end of the statement (the terminal), and continuing to increase in frequency (up to 40%) to the end of the intonational phrase.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ladd |first=R. D. |title=Intonational phonology |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=1996 |isbn=0-521-47498-1 |page=123 }}</ref> New research suggests that the actual rise can occur one or more syllables after the last accented syllable of the phrase, and its range is much more variable than previously thought.<ref name="warren">{{cite journal |last=Warren |first=P. |title=Patterns of late rising in New Zealand English: Intonational variation or intonation change? |journal=Language Variation and Change |volume=17 |year=2005 |issue=2 |pages=209&ndash;230 |issn=0954-3945 |doi=10.1017/s095439450505009x|s2cid=145431336 }}</ref>

== Usage ==
In the United States, the phenomenon of HRT may be fairly recent but is an increasingly common characteristic of speech especially among younger speakers. However, serious scientific and linguistic inquiry on this topic has a much more extensive history in linguistic journals from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain where HRT seems to have been noted as early as World War II.

It has been noted in speech heard in areas of Canada, in [[Cape Town]], the [[Falkland Islands]], and in the United States where it is often associated with a particular [[sociolect]] that originated among affluent teenage girls in southern California (see [[Valleyspeak]] and [[Valley girl]]). It was observed in Mississippi in 1963 (see "Twirling at Ole Miss" in ''[[Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes]]''). Elsewhere in the United States, this tonal pattern is characteristic of the speech heard in parts of the rural [[upper Midwest]] that have come under the influence of [[Norwegian phonology]] through [[Norwegian Minnesotan|Norwegian migration to Minnesota]] and [[Norwegian Dakotan|North Dakota]].

Although it is characterized in Britain as "Australian question intonation" (AQI) and blamed on the popularity of [[Soap opera#Australia|Australian soap operas]] among teenagers, HRT is also a feature of several Irish-English dialects, especially in [[Ulster English|mid-Ulster and Belfast English]].<ref name="bbc">{{cite news |first=Chris |last=Stokel-Walker |title=The unstoppable march of the upward inflection? |work=[[BBC News]] |date=11 August 2014 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28708526 |access-date=17 February 2022 }}</ref>

Research published in 1986, regarding vernacular speech in [[Sydney]], suggested that high rising terminal was used more than twice as often by young people than older people, and was more common among women than men.<ref name="guy">{{cite journal |last1=Guy |first1=G. |last2=Horvath |first2=B. |last3=Vonwiller |first3=J. |last4=Daisley |first4=E. |last5=Rogers |first5=I. |title=An intonational change in progress in Australian English |journal=Language in Society |volume=15 |year=1986 |pages=23&ndash;52 |issn=0047-4045 | doi = 10.1017/s0047404500011635 |s2cid=146425401 }}</ref> In other words, HRT was more common among women born between 1950 and 1970, than among men born before 1950. The same research (and other sources) also suggested that the practice often served to discourage interruption, by indicating that a speaker had not quite completed a particular statement.<ref name="warren"/><ref name="allan"/><ref name="guy"/>

High rising terminal also occurs in non-English languages, such as in Arabic ([[Iraqi Arabic]], [[Egyptian Arabic]] and [[Lebanese Arabic]]), [[Amharic]], [[Cham language|Cham]], [[Tuvaluan language|Tuvaluan]], [[French language|French]], and [[Dominican Spanish|Dominican]]<ref name="Warren2016">{{cite book|author=Paul Warren|title=Uptalk: The Phenomenon of Rising Intonation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7pOzCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA168|date=5 January 2016|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-316-45385-8|pages=168–}}</ref> and other varieties of Spanish.<ref>[http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1884&context=pwpl Uptalk in Spanish Dating Shows?]</ref>

== Effects ==
Media in Australia, Britain, and the United States have negatively portrayed the usage of HRT, claiming that its use exhibits a speaker's insecurities about the statement and undermines effective speaking.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movi0es/lake-bell-talks-about-in-a-world--and-the-politics-of-dialect/2013/08/08/71eb5ed0-ff76-11e2-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html "Lake Bell talks about 'In a World ...' and the politics of dialect"] ''[[The Washington Post]]'', August 10, 2013</ref><ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/a-female-senator-explains-why-uptalk-is-part-of-womens-nature/283107/ A Female Senator Explains Why Uptalk Is Part of Women's 'Nature'] ''The Atlantic'', January 16, 2014</ref><ref>[https://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425608745/from-upspeak-to-vocal-fry-are-we-policing-young-womens-voices "From Upspeak to Vocal Fry: Are We 'Policing' Young Women's Voices?"] ''[[Fresh Air]]''. NPR, July 23, 2015</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/24/vocal-fry-strong-female-voice Young women, give up the vocal fry and reclaim your strong female voice] by Naomi Woofe, July 24, 2015</ref><ref>[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/caveman-logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic "The uptalk epidemic - Can you say something without turning it into a question?"] ''Psychology Today'', October 6, 2010.</ref> ''Time'' reports that it hampers job interviews.<ref>[https://time.com/2820087/3-speech-habits-that-are-worse-than-vocal-fry-in-job-interviews/ "3 speech habits that are worse than vocal fry in job interviews"] ''Time'', June 4, 2013</ref> However, other research has suggested HRT can be an effective way for speakers to establish [[grounding_in_communication|common ground]], that this often involves [[breathy voice]], 
and that its meaning is highly situational, derived from a "complex interaction of time, presupposition, and inference."<ref>{{cite conference|title=Two Pragmatic Functions of Breathy Voice in American English Conversation|author=Nigel G. Ward, Ambika Kirkland, Marcin Wlodarczak, Eva Szekely|conference=Speech Prosody|date=2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Tomlinson |first1=John M. |last2=Fox Tree |first2=Jean E. |date=2011-04-01 |title=Listeners' comprehension of uptalk in spontaneous speech |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027710002970 |journal=Cognition |language=en |volume=119 |issue=1 |pages=58–69 |doi=10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.005 |pmid=21237451 |s2cid=20141552 |issn=0010-0277|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
 
Recent evidence shows that leaders of the peer group are more likely to use HRT in their declaratives than the junior members of the particular peer group.<ref name="warren"/><ref>{{cite journal |last=McLemore |first=C.A. |title=The Pragmatic Interpretation of English Intonation: Sorority Speech |journal=Dissertation Abstracts International A: The Humanities and Social Sciences |volume=52 |number=4 |year=1991 |pages=1311&ndash;A }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cheng |first1=W. |first2=M. |last2=Warren |year=2005 |title= // CAN i help you // : The use of rise and rise-fall tones in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English |journal=International Journal of Corpus Linguistics |volume=10 |number=1 |pages=85&ndash;107 |issn=1384-6655 |doi=10.1075/ijcl.10.1.05che|hdl=10397/619 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> According to [[University of Pennsylvania]] phonologist [[Mark Liberman]], [[George W. Bush]] began to use HRT extensively in his speeches as his presidency continued.<ref>[[Mark Liberman]], [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002708.html "Uptalk uptick?"]. ''[[Language Log]]'', 15 December 2005.</ref> Linguist [[Robin Lakoff]] drew attention to the pattern in her book ''Language and Women's Place'', which argued that women were socialized to talk in ways that lacked power, authority, and confidence. Rising intonation on declarative sentences was one of the features Lakoff included in her description of "women's language", a gendered speech style she believed reflected and reproduced its users' subordinate social status.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lakoff|first=Robin|author-link=Robin Lakoff|title=Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7-NdKhaWQfUC&pg=PA49|year=2004|publisher=Oxford UP|isbn=9780195347173|page=49}}</ref>

==Implications for gender==

Because HRT has been popularized as "Valley Girl Speak", it has acquired an almost exclusively feminine gender connotation. Studies confirm that more women use HRT than men.<ref name="NYblogs">{{cite web 
| url=http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/overturning-the-myth-of-valley-girl-speak/? 
| title=Overturning the Myth of Valley Girl Speak | work=The New York Times 
| first=Jan |last=Hoffman 
| date=December 23, 2013 | access-date=August 15, 2016 }}</ref> Linguist [[Thomas J. Linneman]] contends, "The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use HRT; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk."<ref name=NYblogs/> Though women appear to use HRT more often than men, the differences in frequency are not significant enough to brand HRT as an exclusively female speech pattern. Susan Miller, a vocal coach in Washington, D.C., insists that she receives both male and female clients with equal frequency—not because either gender is concerned that they sound too feminine, but that they sound too young.<ref>{{cite magazine | url=https://time.com/2820087/3-speech-habits-that-are-worse-than-vocal-fry-in-job-interviews/ | title=3 Speech Habits That Are Worse Than Vocal Fry in Job Interviews | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | date=June 4, 2014 | access-date=March 24, 2016 | author=Rhodan, Maya}}</ref>

Findings have thus been inconclusive regarding HRT as a gendered speech pattern, though the (partial) evidence that HRT is more common among women is consistent with the third principle of the [[gender paradox]] identified by sociolinguist [[William Labov]], namely that "in linguistic change from below, women use higher frequencies of innovative forms more than men do." Viewing HRT as "change from below" also explains why it appears to be more common among young speakers.

There appears to be merit to the claim that gendered connotations of HRT give rise to difficulties for women in particular. [[Anne Charity Hudley]], a linguist at [[Stanford University]], suggests, "When certain linguistic traits are tied to women . . . they often will be assigned a negative attribute without any actual evidence."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-24/upspeaks-use-by-smart-men-and-women-and-what-it-means | title=What Does How You Talk Have to Do With How You Get Ahead? | work=Bloomberg.com | date=April 24, 2014 | access-date=March 24, 2016 | author=Winter, Caroline |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150216083104/http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-24/upspeaks-use-by-smart-men-and-women-and-what-it-means|archive-date=February 16, 2015}}</ref> Negative associations with the speech pattern, in combination with gendered expectations, have contributed to an implication that for female speakers to be viewed as authoritative, they ought to sound more like men than women. These implications are perpetuated by various media, including the coverage of politics.

U.S. Senator [[Kirsten Gillibrand]], for example, has voiced her concern that traditionally feminine speech patterns do not allow a female speaker to be taken seriously. "To meet those standards," she says, "you have to speak less like a young girl and more like a young, aspiring professional . . . it's a choice every young woman is going to have to make about how she wants to be and how she wants to be received."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/a-female-senator-explains-why-uptalk-is-part-of-womens-nature/283107/ | title=A Female Senator Explains Why Uptalk Is Part of Women's 'Nature' | work=The Atlantic | date=January 16, 2014 | access-date=March 24, 2016 | author=Green, Emma}}</ref> Lydia Dallet of ''Business Insider'' affirms this concern.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.businessinsider.com/how-uptalk-could-cost-you-a-promotion-2014-1 |work=Business Insider |title=This Communication Quirk Could Cost You a Promotion | access-date=August 14, 2016 |last=Dallet |first=Lydia|date=January 25, 2014}}</ref>

== Origins ==
The origins of HRT remain uncertain. Anecdotal evidence places the conception of the American English variety on the West Coast—anywhere from [[California English|Southern California]] to the [[Pacific Northwest English|Pacific Northwest]].<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/pacificnorthwest/ Do you speak American? American Varieties: Pacific Northwest]</ref> This in turn comes into prominence due to development of "[[Valleyspeak]]" popularized by the [[Frank Zappa]] song "[[Valley Girl (song)|Valley Girl]]" in the early 1980s.

With respect to the southern hemisphere, it has been suggested that the feature may have originated in [[New Zealand English|New Zealand]].<ref name="allan">{{cite book |last=Allan |first=S. |chapter=The rise of New Zealand intonation |editor1-first=A. |editor1-last=Bell |editor2-first=J. |editor2-last=Holmes |title=New Zealand ways of Speaking English |url=https://archive.org/details/newzealandwayssp00holm |url-access=limited |pages=[https://archive.org/details/newzealandwayssp00holm/page/n121 115]&ndash;128 |place=Clevendon |publisher=Multilingual Matters |year=1990 |isbn=1-85359-083-5 }}</ref>

It is unclear whether the American English varieties and the Oceanic varieties had any influence on each other regarding the spread of HRT.

==See also==
* [[Fad]]
* [[Gay male speech]]
* [[Rising declarative]]
* [[Sexy baby voice]]
* [[Vocal fry register]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Paul Warren: ''Uptalk: The Phenomenon of Rising Intonation.'' Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-107-12385-4}}.

== External links ==
* [https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,555379,00.html ''Guardian'' article on uptalk]
* [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002967.html "Uptalk Is Not HRT"] [[Mark Liberman]]'s Language Log (March 28, 2006)
* [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/01/hitchens-like-201001 Christopher Hitchens defines Uptalk] in ''[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]''
* [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28708526 Uptalk examples]
* [https://www.npr.org/2017/12/18/570177171/from-uptalk-to-downtown-new-yawk-robert-siegel-explored-how-we-speak Audio story on uptalking from 1993]

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[[Category:English phonology]]
[[Category:Phonetics]]
[[Category:English language]]
[[Category:Sociolinguistics]]
[[Category:Stereotypes of white Americans]]
[[Category:Stereotypes of white women]]