By Timothy Fitzpatrick
October 16, 2014 Anno Domini
Uptalk—the form of speech generally perceived as emanating from the vocal chords of young, diffident girls, where the voice rises toward the end of a declarative statement—has crept into Western speech habits as a covert saboteur of logic-based thinking.
Uptalk, also known as “valley girl” speech (from California), upspeak, rising inflection, or high rising terminal (HRT), has become so common among English speakers that most are not even aware of why or when they do it. It’s that highly irritative sound you hear in declarative statements that are not meant to be stated in the form of a question but are. An example using a hypothetical interview with an eyewitness to a crime on a newscast would go something like this:
“We were, like, walking down the street (?)… when we heard this loud crashing sound (?)… and there was, like, blood everywhere (?)….
Unfortunately, young girls typically do not grow out of this speech pathology and, what’s worse, they tend infect everyone within their social sphere, even their parents, and even grown men.
Linguists tend to view this speech pathology as indicative of insecurity in the speaker, who subconsciously raises their intonation in order to seek approval of their unsure “declaration”. It is argued that women are more susceptible to this speech pathology, as they tend to be less aggressive in their speech habits.
Believe it or not, there are actually people who defend this pathology and call it the progressive evolution of speech. Uptalk, they argue, indicates empathy in the speaker and creates a more comfortable and relaxed speech environment. This, despite the fact that healthy and confident English speakers can be as empathetic as anyone and can be as easy to talk to as one’s best friend. And there is nothing inherently feminine about uptalk. Truly feminine speech should be pleasant and elegant. Even those unable to clinically recognize uptalk as speech pathology know that there is just something about it that is irritating and unpleasant. Uptalk is ugly. It not only makes the uptalker unattractive, it also makes them sound less unique, since it is so ubiquitous.
Another speech pathology that is commonly associated with uptalkers is the use of the submodifier/conjunction “so” at the beginning of a response to a direct question. One can often hear professionals, experts, even doctors, using this annoying little speech impediment in interviews, especially on shows on National Public Radio (NPR). Like uptalk, this error is believed to have originated in the Silicon Valley tech sector. It appears the use of “so” at the beginning of a response to a direct question indicates a belief of superiority of the speaker. Linguists see it as indicating that the interviewee believes he is superior to the interviewer, and thus uses “so” to detach himself from having to answer directly to the question. Instead of responding with “yes” or “no” and continuing to explain why, the interviewee will begin with “so” (detachment) and go on a bit of a diatribe before eventually getting around to answering the question. These speakers also tend to use “so” frequently, almost in response to every single question in a series, and even at the beginning of fresh, declarative sentences.
The above examples of speech pathology are by no means the only diseases plaguing the great English language and its speakers. There are many. One need only look at the prevalent form of communication today by subcultures (ghettoized Africna Americans), for example, or those communicating by the plethora of mobile techno junk to know how much real, effective, and beautiful communication has deteriorated. But uptalk has a dastardly unique characteristic to it. It appears to be re-engineering how we think.
The source of uptalk is uncertain. It is claimed to have originated everywhere from Silicon Valley tech executives to Australians and seemingly timid Canadians, though, it is certain that it is not very old. It seems to have emerged right alongside the counter-culture revolution that began in the 1950s and ‘60s in the English-speaking world. The diffident nature of uptalk pseudo-statements seems to reveal that the speaker is unsure of basic facts and logic and therefore is caught up in some kind of subjectivist underworld of the dead. Columnist Hank Davis writes, in The Uptalk Epidemic,
“It’s a nasty habit. It is the very opposite of confidence or assertiveness. It’s gotten all out of control. These days, even statements about which there should be no question or doubt are presented in this tentative, timid and deferential manner. Here’s an example. I teach a 4th year university course in which part of the requirement is a seminar presentation. Students used to stand up and share the results of their research in a way that conveyed their confidence and knowledge. They no longer do. Even if they do feel confident, their culture now mandates that they dial it back and sound like this:
My name is Jennifer? My seminar today is on bystander apathy? There is quite a bit of research on this topic?”
Davis continues,
“Why all the questions, Jennifer? Just what is at issue here? Are you not sure of your name? Are you willing to change it if we don’t nod our approval? Why are you unsure of your seminar topic? Does that, too, require our approval?… I think we have an answer to that question. Making a declarative statement is no longer OK. It is not socially acceptable for a 21 year old woman to stand before an audience and tell us her name or what she knows without turning into a shy little girl whose statements are questions or pleas for consensus.”
The speech trend of uptalk is a social engineer’s dream come true. Instead of the brutish, laborious method of forcing a subject to accept a particular ideology, simply get the subject to believe this ideology was arrived at on his own by getting him to think and talk in subjectivist form. After all, how can anything be for certain when one cannot simply state anything with certainty? Now the subject is ripe for social engineering by elites who know for certain in which direction they want to guide us.
So it follows that uptalk has arrived on the scene simultaneously with the surge of socially engineered public education, particularly that advanced by the United Nations Agenda 21, Common Core initiative. Common Core re-education is fairly obvious collectivist, secular humanist propaganda, designed to rip out from the minds of the youth any concept of God, country, family, or any shred of high scholastic logic (in Common Core mathematics, for example, 2+2 does not necessarily equal 4, they claim). Are social engineers also attempting to emasculate men with uptalk or is this all merely “progressivism”? It’s more common to encounter women who are unsure of themselves than men. Men are natural leaders, and even when they are unsure of themselves, they tend to behave and speak as if they are. For men, real men, uptalk is a direct path to emasculation—and with it, patriarchal Christian mores. For women, uptalk instills in them a false sense of feminine speech. For both sexes, uptalk is anti-logic, counter intuitive, and rewires their brains to think in subjectivist terms.
The phenomenon of uptalk may not be the direct work of social engineers, but it certainly appears to be the devil child of the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and beyond, perhaps stretching back to the anti-classicism of the Enlightenment saboteurs.