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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

Excuse me, who "warrants" the way you talk?

If we assume that speakers have conscious control over both their words and manner of delivery, then the sentence can be read as "what is the intent of the speaker who uses vocal fry", and not "what external authority has approved the use of this manner of speech." Your response reads like you were looking to get offended / pick a fight.

> If we assume that speakers have conscious control over both their words and manner of delivery

Whoa, whoa, back up. Why should we assume that? Some level of control, sure. Nowhere near absolute.

And yeah, I'm offended by anyone who tries to critique the way other people talk while at the same time going around talking the way they talk all willy-nilly without concern for who they might be annoying.

It's speech. Everyone has inner thoughts and feelings they want to express. If they're trying to communicate in good faith, just let it go.

I can't speak for OP, but you insist on reading it as a criticism, when it seems to me more of a question in the spirit of scientific inquiry - at what times does a user of the "vocal fry" consider it appropriate? In the linked interview with Zooey Deschanel, she's not using it with every word she speaks. So I think it's natural for someone unfamiliar with this speech pattern to wonder why it's used in some places and not others. Is that a verboten question?

If this:

> Vocal fry is just another manifestation of "I'm cool because I don't care."

is in the spirit of scientific inquiry and not a value judgment, then I probably need to get some fresh air.

Thank you. Some people just seek out arguments instead of conversations.

I'm sorry if you feel I spoke too stongly, but if so it is because I feel strongly that your attempt to impute moral value to a vocal feature you know little about is unfounded and frankly oppressive.

If you'd like to have a conversation about that, you can start by defining your terms: Who or what "warrants" an arbitrary feature of your speech in whatever way you feel the fry is "unwarranted"?

I'm not sure how you're bringing morality into this. I'm simply viewing speech as communication and nothing more. Vocal fry increases noise in the signal to noise ratio, and I don't see how that could be useful.

Slouching = laziness = a moral value, dude. The point is it's not a choice, and even if it were if efficiency were a primary driver of language then we wud all b ritin lk dis n im gesin u dont car 4 dat ether.

Quote for poignancy and mention of authoritative diction as a pass of, well, authority.

I bet this all fits well into NORM dialectics.

We may need 911 to help these idiolects.

Oooh, you learned a new acronym! Now you can use it instead of reasoning.

You're being intellectually dishonest.

Well I wouldn't call them ideolects to their face-- makes 'em ornery.

Oh.

I pushed the literal button.

"We shouldn't be afraid of a few glyphs on a screen."

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