Uptalk is becoming more frequent among men

We really need to come together as a species to combat this. This isn't a gender thing or a generational thing- I remember uptalk from the '80s; much like hatred, greed, and violence, it has probably been around in one form or another ever since we were evolved enough to engage in such activities. If we fail to stop this, we richly deserve whatever horrifying apocalypse follows as a result, whether it's getting stomped to death by a newly-arisen and understandably annoyed Cthulhu, or (more likely) Idiocracy comes true within our lifetimes.

Seriously: THIS CANNOT COME TO PASS. It cannot be allowed to happen. It doesn't matter what extremes we have to go to to stop it, even WWIII. Honestly, the complete and total extinction of humanity in a nuclear holocaust is preferable to someday waking up in a world where adults uptalk at any time ever for any reason at all whatsoever.

There are times in one's life where everything comes down to one struggle; one fight; one crusade. This is one of those times. Do not disappoint me, humanity. Please, please, please, please do not disappoint me, as you have so many times in the past. Do not let this happen. Thanks in advance?

Every time I see language coverage from the BBC I break out in cold sweat. It's usually horrifyingly bad. This one wasn't terrible.

If you want some more background on uptalk and some of its spread from linguists:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=568

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8879

The thing is, people (women and men) were talking in a similar way in the '80s — I was there. In CA. This has been a long time in coming, and I don't believe it was every especially isolated to females. Also, the phenomenon of "vocal fry" (that sort of gravelly sound made by younger people, usually near the end of a sentence)—that's not new, either. I happen to like it, and I remember listening pleasantly to girls who talked that way in the '90s, and possibly before.

When someone always up talks they come off as needlessly timid and desperate for agreement. Or, coming off as faux-inquisitive, as if everything's an open-ended question to ponder.

What also bugs me: Prepending every answer with "So…" a la Zuckerberg.

"The team recorded and analysed the voices of 23 native Californians aged between 18 and 22. The researchers were therefore not able to infer similar language patters in older Californians."

Mmmm, gotta love that solid 23 person sample size surely representing the general youth population :)

It's not clear from this article that the researchers claim any evidence of uptalk in the past being more common among girls and women. The only claim seems to be that this current research showed no difference based on gender.

Which isn't surprising. There are a lot of stereotypes about language usage differences between men and women that are entirely without basis, often in reality being the opposite of the CW.

The team recorded and analysed the voices of 23 native Californians aged between 18 and 22.

- How is this even news? They're saying they happened to find 23 people.. in the entire state...

Is writing being similarly affected? Seems like it would be interesting to know? Further research would be useful?

Edit: Of course, a joke. But note that an article title currently on front page "How to tell when someone is lying?" adds a question mark not in the source.

The wiki entry that really got me looking into this. I see this rampantly in my company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

As in, "I'm Ron Burgandy?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVjRG7PB_4

I work with a lot of male geeks 10+ years younger than me and they all do this when stating an opinion. It is so prevalent I even started doing it. It got so bad I was doing it when I was actually right about stuff "you may want to add comments? And create a new branch? Don't just merge it into master? wait until I someone reviews it?" I've tried to make a conscious effort to stop but it is like a virus.

Seems like a natural thing in a world increasingly in favor of woman. Might not be true for the CS department.

I keep seeing uptalk used to insult someone should "know better" than to ask such revoltingly dumb questions: "How do I debug my app?" "Um...with a debugger?"

Or I've seen uptalk used to supply guesses from other people who don't know the answer but are willing to pontificate: "How does one get a test VM?" "Download a VM product? Contact operations and requisition one?"

Most often the former though, and yes it is annoying.

They only studied 23 people.

I know a few people I like and whose opinions I respect who talk like this, and if I don't make a conscious effort to ignore the uptalk, it drives me mad.

What is it? Why is it so irritating?

I do it on purpose sometimes, but just to make fun of Australians.

i thought it is just (male) hipster talk :) (i'm a Russian immigrant, live in the Valley for more than a decade)

Not only people is sounding more like idiots, people say more and more idiotic things.

Big focus on California, but I feel like this is just West Coast accent in general.

> "Typically, women are trail-blazers in language change and take up innovative features first, then males start using them later.

OT, but why say "women", but then "males"? Or vice versa? I don't particularly like "fe/male": since it's a generic term for the sex of any animal, it comes off more as a biological taxonomy. "We have seen this behaviour in multiple human specimen."

You kind of need those two words as adjectives. But not as nouns.