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Upspeak and vocal fry are tone and frequency modulations promoted by mass media. It was not widely diffuse 20 years ago. Valley talk was one that came out early -79s I guess. But these two has begun to pervade media. Both men and women are guilty of both. It’s unnatural but it’s an affectation like others.

Indeed raising your tone as to construct a question does inject uncertainty into a declarative sentence. In talking with peers that’s fine. In front of an audience it’s as welcome as the people who spray spit while they talk.

Question. Even if there’s a company that agrees with her take (female owned or female run?) would they take her? Can you predict what her next motivation will be?

Maybe she has a book planned instead.

Yeah this is the kind of beneficial feedback you'd expect from presentation coaching (e.g. Toastmasters) for improving your delivery.

Exactly this, for anybody who's done public speaking training, this is baseline feedback you'd expect to get from your coach. Upspeak, vocal fry, junk speech and all other elements of speech devoid of information are to be minimized within reason, while still sounding human and relatable.

Anecdotally I have heard this exact same thing from Western Canadians, almost exclusively women or gay men, to the point where I just consider it the default feminine accent of the region.

I have described it to them (friends from the area) directly as "it sounds like you're setting up for the next sentence and never go there. It makes me think '... and?'"

While I wouldn't quite call it sexist to point out, it definitely manifests more as a feminine accent in my experience.

I don't have strong feelings about whether or not the feedback is sexist but one way I'm thinking about it is if you posit that there is such a thing as an authentic self and you posit you should be allowed to be your authentic self at work, then I guess any advise to change your tone is not appropriate, be you man or woman.

But I don't think we live in a society that is exactly behind the idea that men or women get to be their authentic selves as work.

My authentic self wouldn't be caught dead at work. I'm only at work to acquire the means to be my authentic self at places that...aren't work.

The kinds of workplaces where I could be "my authentic self" are the kinds of workplaces that white collar people deride as "toxic"

Being your authentic self never made sense to anybody who wasn't already fully bought into the politics of the majority tribe at that particular employer. If your authentic self deviates from the expected political and cultural lanes, your best bet is to keep your mouth shut and agree with whatever the dominant view is.

> "When closing sentences in presentations, you finish the sentence in a way that sounds like you're asking a question."

This is called 'uptalking'. The name may help folks who are trying to figure out if it's professional or not. I don't see any consensus so far. (but FWIW, I don't like it, myself)

It's like being fat or ugly or unkempt or stuttering. It makes people dislike the person, but those people are morally wrong so it's un-PC to admit that you dislike someone for these reasons, or even to tell people to accomodate the harsh critics, even if it's good advice.

It’s EXACTLY like this because being fat or ugly or unkempt or stuttering is none of your business and has no impact that justifies your judgment. Disliking people for these reasons is harmful and doesn’t have a valid justification.

I guess it depends on a lot of questions to which I don't personally know the answers. Is that vocal style more common in women than men? When the supervisor says he doesn't find it authoritative, is that because it's not how men talk? Are women conditioned to talk like that specifically because it's less authoritative, because men have not always reacted well to authoritative women?

Basically, I'm not sure whether it's truly a simple "skill" unrelated to gender and how women have been historically perceived and treated.

I read somewhere that it is more common with women in conversation and is meant to garner an affiramitive 'uh-huh' type response in the listener.

Matt Levine (Money Stuff) writes in uptalk and people love it.

But he's trying to be goofy when he does it.

I write in uptalk, not as an affect and people don’t love it, but it helps me get my job done?

According to this paper examining Southern Californian English, https://pages.ucsd.edu/~aritchart/RitchartArvaniti_SpeechPro..., uptalk is about twice as common in women (42%) as in men (20%). Though at 20% it seems common enough in men that reasonable people could debate how gender-specific it is.

>1. A way of speaking that puts an upward inflection on the last word of a statement that makes it sound like a question when it's not. (Common among teens and surfers.)

lol

I'm not native speaker and when I'm not sure about what to say next or I'm not convinced about what I just said e.g whether it makes sense (in general),

then I tend to talk this way (not intentionally, it just happens), even teacher asked me why I do this years ago but I couldn't answer

I guess I gotta be careful with this

Don’t let this dissuade you. It’s a common mode of speech and your usage is a perfect example of how it’s used. It’s okay to be sincere about uncertainty! It’s not okay for people to pressure against that. Uncertainty is how we learn and grow and address things.

> How is that sexist or condescending?

It isn’t inherently, but context is important. In a culture of sexism, it’s not uncommon for women to use more passive language and more deferential tone than/with their male colleagues; sometimes this is a matter of adjusting communication in an effort to be heard, sometimes it’s a cultural difference where those communication styles are rooted in a broader set of instincts around inclusion and empathy.

None of this is universal, of course. But it’s pervasive enough to be a trope.

> Is it sexist if people give her the same advice that helped me? How could one have formulated that to be non-sexist but still useful advice?

Let’s take another common trope about sexism as an analogy. There are a zillion variations of men giving women advice to “smile more”. One that often comes up in the workplace is “people have said they think you’re angry with them, they might be more receptive if you smiled more.” This is something that (1) is seldom said to men, and (2) would have a totally different connotation if it were.

And bridging back from the analogy, uptalk (ending sentences in a way that sounds like a question) is often already a “smile more” type of effort or instinct. Turning that on its head and also advising against it is damned if you do or don’t, and from the same sexist culture effectively suggests women should really just be seen and not heard.

None of that is implied or in context in the advice you received.

The "smile more" analogy is, I think, a good explanation of it. Women's behavior, including language, is tracked closely, and anything that stands out can be used as a justification for worse treatment. When the solution is "don't do that", rather than changing the culture to treat men and women the same, it's sexist.

Uptalk doesn't actually sound like a question. It's similar, but nobody actually listening to the person is confused by it. Rather, it's singled out because it's a pattern associated with women.

Women are constantly being monitored for gender-specific behavior. Women who don't dress in female-specific ways will be censured for it, but so will those who show too much of their femininity. The same outfit can end up being criticized for showing both too much and too little.

I do feel sorry for the manager, who gets stuck between the rock and the hard place. It's wise to act defensively. But it's also unwise to simply give in to a set of shifting, contradictory demands. It sucks that the manager gets put in a position where the right thing to say was "You talk however you want and I'll fight for you regardless of what you choose". That shouldn't have to be her job, on top of all of the other ways a manager already fights for their employees. It's yet another case where we heap extra burdens on some people and then act surprised when they don't make it to the very top ranks.