Studies confirm that more women use HRT than men.[18] Linguist Thomas J. Linneman contends, "The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use HRT; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk".[18] Though women appear to use HRT more often than men, the differences in frequency are not significant enough to brand HRT as an exclusively female speech pattern. Susan Miller, a vocal coach in Washington, D.C., insists that she receives both male and female clients with equal frequencynot because either gender is concerned that they sound too feminine, but that they sound too young.[19]
Susan Sankin, a New York State licensed speech pathologist, affirms that she has "now noticed in my practice that it is a conversational style that extends equally across gender, age, and socioeconomic levels. It seems that nobody is immune to this trend that has become as contagious as the common cold".[20] Findings have thus been inconclusive regarding HRT as a gendered speech pattern, though the (partial) evidence that HRT is more common among women is consistent with the third principle of the gender paradox identified by sociolinguist William Labov, namely that "in linguistic change from below, women use higher frequencies of innovative forms more than men do". Viewing HRT as "change from below" also explains why it appears to be more common among young speakers.
Despite inconclusive research,[citation needed] there appears to be merit to the claim that gendered connotations of HRT give rise to difficulties in the feminist sphere. Anne Charity Hudley, a linguist at the College of William & Mary, suggests, "When certain linguistic traits are tied to women ... they often will be assigned a negative attribute without any actual evidence".[21] Negative associations with the speech pattern, in combination with gendered expectations, have contributed to an implication that for female speakers to be viewed as authoritative, they ought to sound more like men than women. These implications are perpetuated by various media, including the coverage of politics.
Female U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, for example, has voiced her concern that traditionally feminine speech patterns do not allow a female speaker to be taken seriously. "To meet those standards," she says, "you have to speak less like a young girl and more like a young, aspiring professional...it's a choice every young woman is going to have to make about how she wants to be and how she wants to be received".[22] Feminist objections to this may take issue with the perhaps arbitrary distinction Gillibrand makes between a "young girl" and "a young, aspiring professional". Further, the choice young women purportedly must make about how she wants to be received does not appear to be a choice young men must also makeat least not one as widely urged by authoritative figures. Lydia Dallet of Business Insider affirms this concern.[23]
I just listened to an interview in which a woman physician was trying to correct misinformation that's been in the media recently about her specialty--a serious task, and one that required her to sound credible, accurate and sure of her facts. Instead, she sounded unsure of herself and as if she were trying out answers rather than putting them across convincingly, all because of one vocal issue: An upward inflection at the end of most of her sentences.
