Uptalk, or, In which the furriest man you know is on regional TV

[throatybeard]

I don't know why I'm sharing this, but I am.

Our (UMSL's) media liaison got in touch with me this past weekend. A producer at KTVI, which is our local Fox affiliate, got wind of one or more recent articles (NBC, Guardian) and radio segments (NPR) dealing with high rising terminal intonation--much better known among lay speakers as "uptalk."

Unfortunately for me, I'm a team player, so I agreed to appear on KTVI's morning news show today. The clip below is about four minutes long. The reason people click through is that Alicia Silverstone is easier on the eyes than I am.

http://fox2now.com/2013/12/18/why-do...-valley-girls/

You can hear me perform uptalk in a much less hyperbolic and more authentic fashion than the anchor is doing, when I do my Yadi/Schnucks bit.

I think this went as well as it possibly could, which isn't as well as I had hoped. I had prepared three talking points and only managed to spit two of them out during the interview. The anchor steered it in a direction that was all about reinforcing stereotypes that I was meekly trying to dispel. I sort of think the only reason they did this segment was that she was itching to do her Kardashian impression. Also, it was at 8:40 AM, and I had been up since 3:00, and I had swallowed a whole sugar-free Red Bull, which is the worst idea I've had in years.

I did a segment on KMOV (our CBS affiliate) about three and a half years ago about Missouri/Missourah, and in post, they edit-massacred what I said. Massa-creed. They murdered it. Rearranging individual words and adding "killed JonBenet Ramsey" in Maurice Lamarche's voice really wouldn't have been much worse that what KMOV did to what I said.

I've only talked to the media, I don't know, about eight times in my life, but the main thing I've learned already is that you sort of have to take what the defense gives you. The journalist comes in with an agenda, which is to take what you give them and squish it into a pre-existing container of their choosing, or their superiors' choosing. You have no control over the article or the segment. The segment or article will be what they want it to, if they're lucky, but it'll probably be what their superiors (editor, producer) wants it to be. Unless you're downright uncooperative, and I'm not, you as the interviewee have no control over anything except what comes out of your own mouth, and even that's probably only 85% under your control, given the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And this interview was live. {gulp} I'm not sure whether that's better (you can't fix what you've said) or worse (they can mangle the mess out of what you said with editing in post, if the interview wasn't live). You know what, I might just take live.

So if you're in the NFL and you're running a two-minute drill to get into field goal range, and the defense gives you fifteen yards up the middle on a slant route, you take that. You jump on it. You don't fire the ball into triple coverage in the end zone. I left some yards on the field.

My third, unspoken talking point was the most important one, in my mind, but the anchor steered things in such a way that I didn't think I could fit it in. In my mind, uptalk serves to uphold the Cooperative Principle, insofar as it's a bid for demonstrative backchanneling. It's also a covertly powerful discourse move, as Matt Gordon pointed out in a Facebook thread on my page, in that its use prolongs the speaker's holding of the floor, since it doesn't lead to a turn-change. The segment was actually thirty seconds longer than they had told me (4:00, not 3:30), but I could smell the fact that I wouldn't have time to (a) explain Grice's Cooperative Principle, (b) define backchanneling and get the business about holding the floor in. And the anchor wouldn't have any positive talk about uptalk whatsoever. I think I did as I should, which was to be the gentle furred creature who is acting somewhat agreeably.

I wish she hadn't asked me about vocal fry; with that time, I might could've accomplished what I wanted to in a concise fashion. Every second counts when you're in front of a camera.

But hey, UMSL sweater vest! <jazz hands>



(No, I didn't have make-up on, nor did they offer me any. A pretty girl who is a friend of mine already asked me that today, and I said, no, those are my real, unflattering, Towelie-looking bloodshot eyeballs cooking under the studio lights).

[davekay1971]

Nicely done interview and the beard represented well.

100% agree that the reporter was way too impressed with her own imitations of the Kardashians and the Valley Girls.

I found the parts of your post regarding the manipulation of interviews and quotes fascinating. There is something strikingly unethical about taking someone's words and twisting them or editing them to get a different meaning from them. I know it's common, and not just there in interviews (without getting into PPB territory or judging the case, NBC's selective editing of Zimmerman's 911 call to maximize the racial tones comes to mind as a recent, destructive, example). Unfortunately, reporting seems to have moved more and more in the direction of selective siting either to push an agenda, maximize ratings, or both.

Regarding both uptalk and vocal fry, what is the purpose of these linguistic devices, Throaty? Is it merely parroting a style, or is there an advantage, image, or meaning conveyed by them?