Read on Twitter
I want to add some linguistic resources to this. Linguists have been doing the work to explain what's going on here. I'll focus on vocal fry here, but get into some other stuff at the end. https://twitter.com/EvilJoeMcVeigh/status/1315527228088881152
First of all, there's the idea that people are speaking a certain way and this makes them less successful in the labor market. What's behind this?
You guessed it! It's sexism.
You guessed it! It's sexism.
Because it's not that "people" are speaking a certain way, it's that women have the gall to speak at all. Finding that people don't like women using vocal fry is smoke and mirrors. Our society conditions people (esp. men) to not like women speaking, especially in places of power.
So we use things like "vocal fry" to say: this is the problem women have in the workforce. It's an excuse. The problem women have in the workforce is that they are not respected by people who hold power over them, whether they use fry or not.
Second, this perpetuates misogyny. We're telling women that they are doing something wrong (Pro tip: there's nothing wrong with vocal fry and women know exactly how to use it for pragmatic purposes. So do you!).
Instead, we should be saying that society discriminates against women. And it says the problem is vocal fry. Or uptalk. Or breathy voice. EVEN WHEN MEN DO THESE THINGS TOO. Because the problem isn't that women are doing it, the problem is sexism.
Side note: studying whether women do this more than men would be very, very hard. Because we need to take context into account. Do women do it more in interviews? In conversation? Overall? How do we answer these Qs? How do we get a representative sample? It's almost impossible.
Side note, part 2: We have to be very careful about making general claims about the way ALL women speak based on the way a few hundred people judged two short non-natural clips of women speaking.
Back to the task at hand: Resources!
@VocalFriesPod talks about this stuff in this episode (before the 10 minute mark, but do your homework and listen to the whole thing): https://radiopublic.com/the-vocal-fries-GOoXdO/s1!d4e4f
@VocalFriesPod talks about this stuff in this episode (before the 10 minute mark, but do your homework and listen to the whole thing): https://radiopublic.com/the-vocal-fries-GOoXdO/s1!d4e4f
Check out this episode of @VocalFriesPod (about fry but also more generally the other ways women's speech is policed). With @lisa_b_davidson, who knows language sounds and knows how they are perceived by people. Because, you know, she's a linguist! https://radiopublic.com/the-vocal-fries-GOoXdO/s1!3459d
Check out "Sociolinguistic research: application and impact" by Robert LAwson and Dave Sayers. @rob_lawson1 promises me that there's stuff in there about the study in question :) https://www.routledge.com/Sociolinguistic-Research-Application-and-Impact/Lawson-Sayers/p/book/9780415748520
Check out @mixedlinguist, whose work focuses on language and identity, and who has some work on how people's dialects are perceived, especially in terms of race. (A bit more on that later) https://nicolerholliday.wordpress.com/
You can also listen to her discuss @mixedlinguist research here: https://radiopublic.com/the-vocal-fries-GOoXdO/s1!195be. Fucking great stuff. Guess what: people think vocal fry is a "white" thing, but it's not. We have other ways of discriminating against non-white people. Yes, this discussion sucks.
There's reams of ling research on how women's language is policed. But also, guess what? Women lead language change. Don't like the way women are speaking today? Too bad, your sons & grandsons are gonna sound exactly like them. https://daily.jstor.org/young-womens-language-patterns-at-the-forefront-of-linguistic-change/
Yo! Please add sources to this thread! I know I don't have them all. Thanks!
Here's an article for the general public about the polcing of women's speech, including (surprise!) a discussion of a man complaining about women using vocal fry WHILE USING VOCAL FRY HIMSELF: https://jezebel.com/women-stop-talking-old-men-dont-like-how-you-speak-5973869
Ok, broadening things a bit. This isn't only about people women's speech. Other marginalized people are also policed for the way they speak. What?! Really? Also, apparently the Pope is Catholic.
Here's what happens: some linguistic feature (vocal fry, uptalk, the word "like", whatever) gets assigned to a marginalized group and then they get discriminated against for using that feature. Non-marginalized groups use it too, but they don't get the discrimination.
This is why the idea of "white voice" works in the movie "Sorry to Bother You". and
You don't even need to be a linguist or have the linguistic vocab to know that Black people are discriminated against for the way they speak. You accept that part of the plot because you know it's true.
Now, pulling it back together - what would you think of an academic article that told Black people to "talk white" in order to get a job? Yeah, that's what this article is doing. It's telling women to talk like men.
But guess what? Smoke and mirrors again. It doesn't matter if women talk more like men (use less vocal fry, or whateverthefuck) or Black people talk more like white people. Because the linguistic discrimination is a proxy for sexism and racism.
This study found that society is sexist. And while I'm all for confirming our beliefs with data... like, no shit. A better designed study would have discussed these issues, rather than saying basically "Women, stop talking please. K thanks."
Oh boy, this is a long thread. I'm going to let you go now. Maybe I'll compile a list of resources one day, but the one final pro tip: "If you're going to do a linguistic study, goddamn ask one fucking linguist to be on your study." Words of wisdom from @VocalFriesPod 
