Elleke contributed to this morning’s episode of Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, in the segment ‘Vocal Fry + Speech Patterns in Young Women’:
‘Vocal Fry’ may not be new – think Mae West in the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong, but it’s the latest in a line of speech patterns popularised by celebrities such as the Kardashians, Scarlett Johansen, and Lena Dunham. Best described as a guttural lowering of the voice at the end of sentences, it’s a manner of speaking which some linguists believe undermines women, and causes them to be taken less seriously. Joining Jenni to discuss the feminist implications of ‘vocal fry’ are the author and journalist Naomi Wolf, and Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, Dr Elleke Boehmer.