The New Female Dialect. What happened to women's voices?

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

All people live by a culture which is made of up belief systems, habits and norms. At the same time cultures change and for some reason the cultural norms change quite quickly in the United States where cultural fads quickly come and go.

In my recent trip to the United States I was struck by how many young women were speaking with odd gravely voices, which I discovered is known as “creaky voice“ or “vocal fry”. This is a form of speaking where vocal chords are rattled in an unnatural way and then fragmented words emerge from the back of the throat. This seems to be the latest cultural conformity among young women and some studies claim that over 70% of them speak this way. Doctors say it destroys the vocal chords.

This form of speaking is almost like a unique dialect where words are broken apart and at the end of a sentence they fade into mini Caterpillar tractor like sounds. Words become a series of guttural fluctuations that get swallowed up the ending word at the end of the sentence.

I was wondering if young women do this to differentiate themselves from the previous generation or even to piss-off their mothers? The problem is that even their mothers are now speaking this way. In reality when a woman speaks like this it makes her appear unsure of herself.

One can only wonder about the philosophical presuppositions behind creaky voice and why has this become a valued form of communication in today’s female population? Is it a DaDa form of art that has come back to hit us in auditory form? In a Postmodern world is creaky voice a way of tangibly demonstrating that words ultimately succumb to a subjective meaninglessness? Perhaps it is a derivation of the Eastern ‘Om’ chant? What are the origins of this form of speaking and why has it become so popular?

Creaky voice is an odd cultural conformity. But more so, I wonder if it is silent fragmented scream that begs for love?