I really know? What I’m talking about?
Am I the only one left? Who gets annoyed any more? When presenters engage in uptalk?
When they end sentences? And sometimes even just a few words? With the rising intonation at the end that used to signal a question in Standard American English?
Wow. I find it grating to even read sentences punctuated that way.
Mark Liberman’s excellent Language Log blog educated me that uptalk is not, as I thought, used at present mainly by insecure, young, and/or low status people (see this post, and this one). Instead, it’s “mainly used by “powerful” speakers, those “institutionally responsible for the conduct of the talk” — teachers, doctors, talk-show hosts and so on.”
I find this research both convincing and irrelevant. It’s convincing because it’s well-done work. It’s irrelevant because uptalk is not only spoken, it’s also heard. And the impressions it leaves on its hearers matter a great deal.
We judge the people who are talking to us in large part by how they’re talking to us. This is not wise or fair, but it is universal. A lot of Americans will give you a huge amount of intellectual credit if you sound like 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy, and penalize you if you sound like Kenneth the page.
I bet that a lot of people raised on Standard American English unconsciously assign an IQ and/or expertise penalty to presenters who go heavy on the uptalk. I know I do.
I’ve attended a few talks recently by smart young people who had interesting things to say and were clearly on top of their material, but were (in my view) shooting themselves in the foot? With their incessant uptalk?
Yes, I’m old, and crusty, and need to embrace shifts in dialect as they occur. But I’m pretty sure I’m the rule, not the exception, among decision makers in the business world today. Millennials are not yet calling the shots; Gen Xers and Baby Boomers still are. And as (unelected) spokesperson for my generation and the ones behind me, I’m stating for the record that uptalkers sound shaky and needy to us.
The first rule of presenting is to know your audience. So if you’re going to be in front of a group with Standard notions of how to intone a declarative sentence, you should take those notions into account.
