Please , NPR , tell Melissa Block to stop vocal frying . I am not sure why, but her voice irritates me so much that I change stations at once.
Can’t we just make that an overall NPR imperative?
If NPR banned vocal fry, we’d get nothing but pledge drives and dead air.
I listen to NPR a lot and vaguely recognize the name Melissa Block, but what is “vocal frying”? Is that one of their shows?
By the way, given The Daily Show’s fondness of puns, I’m sure they’re waiting for a sex scandal at NPR so they can lead with “Ball Things Considered”.
It’s a prevalent and annoying affectation for women to attach a growl at the end of every sentence. Basically, the voice tone pitches downward and there is a growling noise at the back of the throat. I’m sure somebody can find a good example online.
I addressed this subject herea couple of years ago. It makes me absolutely NUTS! All of the women reporters on NPR seem to do it. Except Terry Gross, but I don’t consider her a reporter. And of course, Diane Rehm has her own voice problems, which don’t bother me at all because they are not an affectation, which vocal fry certainly is!
I guess we could bombard Melissa with tweetsbegging her to stop it! She is one of the worst offenders. I just tweeted her.
Personally, I think Eleanor Beardsley’s vocal fry is the most over-the-top and annoying. I have a very hard time listening to her reports.
If you watch that video, vocal fry is the creaky noise trailing vocal phrases.
Well, now that I know what it is, I’m sure I will notice and be irritated by it.
Thanks a lot, OP.
I hadn’t heard this term before, but it certainly does zero in on an annoying affectation.
As far as Melissa Block is concerned: I’ve disliked her ever since she became a regular ATC host, but not for the vocal fry: for her having “a smile in her voice.” No doubt there’s some more generally-known term for this, but…it’s talking while smiling. You can hear it. It seems very unprofessional to my ears, and it’s unnecessary and manipulative-sounding. She does it most intensively when putting a ‘gotcha’ question to an interviewee.
I’ve never heard either Audie Cornish or former regular host Michele Norris do it…so it’s not something that ‘is expected of women in broadcasting’ or anything like that.
I don’t know her name, but there’s one NPR reporter whose accent drives me nuts. Sounds like Minnesota, but I’m not sure. She talks of ‘dall-ers’ (Think of the name ‘Al’, and not the word ‘all’) instead of ‘dahl-ers’ That sort of thing. Sounds like she might be fun to have a beer with in a sports bar; but as a journalist, her accent is distracting.
I think women who do this believe it makes them sound more competent or educated. In fact, I don’t think I have ever heard a woman who was not academically accomplished employ this extremely annoying affectation. I work with a few of them, PhDs all.
I am especially annoyed by those who let the fry trail at the end. Seriously, just shoot me.
I heartily concur. Especially the part about the gotcha question. “So, Mr. Prime Minister, do you think being brought up on war crimes charges will distract voters from that sex scandal last year?”
Heh, I heard a story a few weeks ago–on NPR–about how people who speak with vocal fry are viewed more negatively in job interviews than those who speak normally.
Probably because the interviewer can barely keep from reaching across the desk to strangle them.
You’re no doubt talking about Zoe Chace from Planet Money. She over-enunciates everything and has this “hyper-Midwestern” voice that sounds put on. It’s terrible, because she’s actually covered interesting topics. I have the same attraction to her voice as I do to horrible smells… I’m just curious how bad it is when she starts speaking. Then I’m repulsed.
At one time, I sat in an cubicle adjacent to a young lady that did the vocal fry thing. She worked in a different group, so I didn’t know her very well. In her group, she was the only female in a group of middle-aged engineers. She was also young and very attractive. I noticed, over time, that when one of her coworkers would come into her cube, she would really ramp up the vocal fry. However, when she talked on the phone to friends or family, it would disppear completely.
I figured that her speaking voice with her coworkers was a defense mechanism against the unwanted attention and the patronizing and condescending crap she had to put up with.
Wow, it doesn’t bother me at all. You folks may need actual problems in your lives.
Yeah it basically comes down to a “get off my lawn” issue.