Talk Like a Girl

I’m not very good at holding my tongue. I never struggle with coming up with something to say, and my friends can count on my side-comments and abilities to keep a conversation going. I’ve never not hit the word-limit for a paper, and growing up my report cards were littered with teachers notes of “Excessive Talking.” 

It’s not that I like talking just to hear the sound of my own voice, but I’ve always found strength in my speech. I read 100 books annually as a kid to grow my vocabulary, and as corny as it sounds, I really enjoy studying linguistics and reworking sentences to practice learning how to speak more effectively and articulately. 

My identity with being talkative coincides with my identity with being a woman. Women get characterized as chatty and criticized for talking too much, which is something I’ve noticed all my life. Not just how much they say, but how they say it. The patterns of speech, dialectical differences, and little mannerisms we incorporate into our daily manner of speaking are all too often mocked and ridiculed by men and not girls-girls. 

Consider this a dictionary and history book of why women speak the way we do. I hope by defining a “women’s register,” it can lead to more kindness and open-mindedness to understand the casualties of these integral facets of speech. 

Gendered speech patterns provides a binary view into gender norms and how these generalizations impact people on a daily basis. 1970s, linguist Robin Lakoff wrote Language and Woman’s Place, identifying what is referred to as a “women’s register” (Lakoff), and how “[i]t is through language that women’s inferior place in society is maintained” (Lakoff). Language is the most powerful weapon and force of technology of our species. It communicates our societal norms, standards, and cultural patterns integral to our daily lives. It makes sense that language would also enforce structural misogyny. 

Let’s talk about a couple media buzzwords that criticize the way we as women speak, sound, punctuate our sentences, and choose our vocabulary. 

Vocal Fry. This happens by “dropping your voice to its lowest natural register, which makes your folds vibrate to produce a creaking sound” (Mashable). This also translates to the Valley Girl Accent, which is overwhelmingly described as “”unbearable,” “annoyingly adolescent,” “beyond annoying,” and “excruciating,”” (Mashable). I’m guilty as charged for this one– I’ve been told numerous times I talk like I smoke a few packs a day. It’s not easy on the ears, so why do we do it? Jessica Bennet, the gender editor at The New York Times and the author of Feminist Fight Club describes this as a product of the natural “flexible, experimental, and higher pitched” (Mashable) speech style of most women, and how this doesn’t fit the “masculine style of speech—succinct, straightforward, confident—that is associated with workplace leadership and power” (Bennett). Basically, vocal fry is an effort of being taken more seriously, by mimicking masculine speech associated with dominance and control. In the past 50 years alone, women’s voices have dropped an average of 23 Hz (Mashable), as the influx of women into the workforce has forced them to lower their voices to be respected. 

Upspeak. On the other hand of the spectrum, you raise your voice at the end of a sentence to sound like a question, making the assertion, “this is the answer,” sound more like, “is this the answer?” I talk like this when I’m uncertain, from habitually being spoken over, and when I’m insecure about contributing to a discussion. While men also demonstrate this, we use upspeak for different reasons. Tom Linneman analyzed the use of upspeak in Jeopardy!, which revolves around contestants responding to trivia in the form of a question. He found that the more successful the men on the show were, the less they used upspeak, and continued to ask their “question” in a straight pitch. For women, the upspeak increased as the game progressed, which Linneman attributes to the psychological guilt factor of women that they “continue to feel they must apologize for their success” (Rutter). 

Pitch and Tone. Growing up, my mom always said, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Across the board, female speech comes across as, “insecure, less competent, and sometimes even less trustworthy” (Mashable).  To counteract this, when I’m defensive or speaking to a crowd, I drop my voice, to come across as more soothing and authoritative. Alternatively, when speaking to respected professors or family members, I raise my tone to appear less abrasive. It’s not actually changing the content of my speech, but it makes me feel more secure that I’m coming across the right way.

Vocal crutches. This is a big one. It’s every “well”, “but”, “so”, “literally”, “actually”, and “like” we use to fill gaps in our thoughts and make our words flow. Wouldn’t it just be easier to pause, take a breath, and continue? Not historically. In the 19th century, women finally were able to host salons and invite intellectuals and artists into their home and “curate the conversation” (“Women’s Role”). To maximize the time these women had to speak and avoid being interrupted, we relied on these filler words to keep going. Today, “like” is, like, a UCSB student’s every-other-word, but still gets criticized predominantly in girls more than anyone else. 

Hedging. This happens when you temper your words to be more passive. It’s adding phrases like, “I believe/hope/feel” to sentences, or tag questions like, “do you know what I mean?”, or accompanying “sort off,” and “I’m sorry,” to make your speech more passive. By adding this, we make it easier to be bypassed, when all we want is to seem less direct.

Add to these our value of qualitative descriptors in the form of fluffy adjectives, our tendency to persuade rather than instruct (“I think this is an option that we should consider, I feel like it’s most effective for the time being” versus “My idea is the best one we’ve got, we should move ahead with it”), and even just broader intonation and greater degrees of stress on certain words. 

I’m not here to tell you to talk any differently. I’m not going to tell you to speak more dominantly, be unafraid to come across as bossy, or be confident in your voice. What I am going to say is by knowing why you speak the way you do, you can alter your speech to accomplish what you want to do. 

Instead of being critical of how women speak, be empathetic and understand why she talks the way she does. Understand that her vocal fry, upspeak, crutches, and hedging are results of “the way they [women] are taught to use language, and in the way general language use treats them [women]” (Lakoff). Be empathetic that she was taught how it’s okay for little boys to be loud and talkative, because “boys will be boys”, but God forbid she does the same. That up until about a century ago, women’s voices mattered so little and were deemed so trivial that they couldn’t even vote. That her speech is a coping mechanism taught to her by her mother, her friends, the men in her life. Of how to adapt to a vicious, cacophonous environment. An environment where her voice gets drowned out, an all but a mute whisper. Understand that in speaking up, in her using her voice, she’s learning to take up space. To be loud. To be listened to. 

I’ve been conditioned all my life to be quiet and polite, to remember to be thoughtful, and that I have two ears and only one mouth. I still love to talk, and it’s pretty much impossible to get me to shut up. By addressing historical implications of speech patterns, we can move forward with positive mindsets focused on inclusion and fairness to all, regardless of who’s speaking. 

• college
• language
• Speech and language
• Women's History Month