Effects of Gender and Regional Dialect on Uptalk in the American Midwest
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Date
2015-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
This study compares the distribution of uptalk contours across male and female speakers of two Midwestern dialects of American English. Sixteen speakers, evenly divided between dialect and gender, were recorded reading ten passages in plain lab speech. The contours defined as uptalk in this study were H* H-H%, H* L-H%, L* H-H%, and L* L-H%. The results indicate that neither gender nor dialect had an effect on overall uptalk frequency, which could reflect prosodic similarities in the two dialects. The null results for gender are particularly surprising because they run contrary to many of the previous studies on uptalk, which found that women use uptalk more than men. Gender and dialect also had no significant effect on the types of uptalk contours used: speakers from both dialects used primarily three of the four uptalk contours that were examined (H* L-H%, L* H-H% and L* L-H%). These uptalk contours differed from the uptalk contours identified in other North American varieties of English, suggesting that there are regional differences in uptalk realization.
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Keywords
prosody, regional dialect, gender, uptalk, intonation