Creaky voice: Invitation to be part of my research project

[Karl Hagen]

In the early 00's, when I was teaching at a Catholic Women's College in
Southern California, I taught speech for several years, and I would
estimate that at least 10% of my students had the creaky voice feature.
They were invariably white and middle class, but there was nothing to my
mind that put them at the high end of middle class. And since almost all
of the students came from the west coast, I would say that the feature
is found far beyond the Northeast.

I associate it with younger, white, middle-class women but not with a
particular regional locus.

In speech circles, BTW, the creaky voice is often noted as a vocal flaw
to be eliminated.

On 12/31/2010 5:25 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Creaky voice: Invitation to be part of my research project
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I can't believe I'm agreeing with Tom. My knowledge of "creaky voice" is
> extremely limited, but I do associate it with upper middle-class, even
> wealthy, women in the Northeast. Rightly or wrongly, I associate it with the
> phenomenon once dubbed "Long Island lockjaw."
>
> For the curious, Safire's 1987 column on LI lockjaw is here:
>
> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD91738F93BA25752C0A961948260&sec=&spon=d=all&pagewanted=all
>
> Wikipedia calls it "Locust Valley lockjaw." Neither source mentions
> "creakiness," but that may owe something to the difficulty of finding an
> appropriate word. Trying to talk through nearly clenched teeth might well
> encourage that "creakiness." (FWIW, the "textbook" examples offered - TV
> characters Thurston Howell III and Jane Hathaway - seem to me not to have
> been very creaky. But Meghan McCain doesn't sound creaky to me either: maybe
> when I heard her she was not in the properly disdainful mood.)
>
> I certainly never noticed the phenomenon in real life when I lived in New
> York City (till 1974).
>
> My standard of creakiness, as mentioned on the thread "Bad Girls Ride
> Again," is Kristen Kelly of Boston.
>
> The only male "creaker" who comes to mind is (perhaps significantly) John
> Wayne. But his "melody" seems to me to have been rather different. AFAIK,
> JW's creakiness was idiosyncratic.
>
> Disregard the above if unhelpful. But I do find creakiness novel and
> interesting.
>
> JL
> On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Tom Zurinskas<truespel at hotmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas<truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Creaky voice: Invitation to be part of my research
>> project
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Women's creaky voice is an interesting phenomenon.  I wonder which
>> celebrit=
>> ies are the creakiest.  I remember that Senator McCain's daughter Meghan
>> se=
>> emed particularly creaky. She's from Phoenix.
>> =20
>> What makes the creaky sound anyway?  Epiglottis?
>> =20
>> I would think that if listeners would rate voices on a social scale=2C
>> they=
>> 'd say the creakiness is higher than non-crrekiness.
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas=2C USA - CT20=2C TN3=2C NJ33=2C FL7+=20
>> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>>
>>
>>   =20
>>> Date: Thu=2C 30 Dec 2010 20:35:34 -0800
>>> From: ipyuasa at BERKELEY.EDU
>>> Subject: Creaky voice: Invitation to be part of my research project
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>> =20
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------=
>> ------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Ikuko Patricia Yuasa<ipyuasa at BERKELEY.EDU>
>>> Subject: Creaky voice: Invitation to be part of my research project
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>> ------
>>> =20
>>> Dear colleagues:
>>> =20
>>> =20
>>> My name is Ikuko Patricia Yuasa.I am currently a visiting scholar at UC
>>> Berkeley=2C preparing grant proposals for research grants such as the
>>> National Endowment for Humanities Grants.
>>> =20
>>> I am looking for 2 or 3 people who would be interested in being paid to
>> b=
>> e
>>> part of my current research project proposal. My preliminary research on
>>> socio-cultural usage of American women's creaky voice was recently
>>> published in American Speech by the American Dialect Society.
>>> =20
>>> http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/85/3/315
>>> =20
>>> I was encouraged by the reviewers of this publication to pursue further
>>> investigation into this phenomenon by American women. Also=2C this
>>> preliminary research result may appear in Time Magazine in 2011 as it has
>>> recently caught the attention of of the magazine's reporter. I am
>>> looking for those who teach college students in three American dialect
>>> regions of Mountains (states located near Rocky Mountains)=2C South
>>> Atlantic=2C and North Atlantic.Their responsibilities are:
>>> =20
>>> #1. Assigning approximately 100 (native American English speaker)
>> student=
>> s
>>> to participate in a speech perception survey as part of their coursework
>>> of the courses that the collaborators teach during the spring
>> (preferable=
>> )
>>> or/and fall semester of 2012.
>>> =20
>>> #2. Assistance in recruiting 40 paid (native bilingual American English
>>> speaker) informants (20 males and 20 females) by making announcements in
>>> the collaborators' courses during the spring (preferable) or/and fall
>>> semester of 2012.
>>> =20
>>> #3. Assistance in locating a room where I can record 10 to 15 min.
>>> conversations by these informants.
>>> =20
>>> I am budgeting a research assistant in linguistics department at UC
>>> Berkeley. If the collaborating researchers allow the research assistant
>>> and I to directly communicate with the students participating in the
>>> research=2C their burden should be minimized. The monetary compensation
>> t=
>> hat
>>> I allocated for collaborating researchers is $5000 each. Please see the
>>> itemized based on the number used for this year's grant for the National
>>> Endowment for Humanities below:
>>> =20
>>> $50=2C400/12 months
>>> ***
>>> $6=2C000 ($1000 x 6 months): 1 research assistantship
>>> $15=2C000 ($5=2C000 x 3): 3 collaborating researchers
>>> $6000 ($2000 x 3): traveling to 3 collaborating research sites
>>> $2400 ($20 x 40 informants x 3 research sites): payments
>>> $200 ($100 x 2 digital recorders): digital recorders
>>> $20=2C800: primary investigator's research leave
>>> ***Total: $50=2C400
>>> =20
>>> Please let me know if you are interested in becoming a research
>>> collaborator of this project.
>>> =20
>>> =20
>>> Regards=2C
>>> Ikuko Patricia Yuasa=2C Ph.D.
>>> Visiting Scholar
>>> Center for Japanese Studies
>>> University of California=2C Berkeley
>>> 2223 Fulton Street Room 500 #2318
>>> Berkeley=2C CA 94720-2318
>>> ipyuasa at berkeley.edu/ipyuasa at cal.berkeley.edu
>>> 510.642.3156
>>> =20
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>>                                           =
>>
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>>
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>
>
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