DOWN WITH UPTALK

By Hank Davis

I attended an international conference this past summer, and one of the British hosts sidled up to me during a Canadian presentation. He leaned over and whispered, asking about the presenter: "What's wrong with her? Do all Canadians talk like that? It sounds like all she's doing is asking questions."

I felt both saddened and vindicated. For years, I've been getting on my students for this needless vocal tic that devalues what they have to say. I want them to sound professional, not only in content but also in style. Most of them are batting .500. They do their homework, but when it comes time to speak out loud, they revert to uptalk.

It's become an epidemic.

Talk to a teenager and you're almost guaranteed to hear it, although the problem is more prevalent among young women. And now it's spreading from the kids to their parents. It's getting so we don't even notice uptalk anymore.

I hear it from other university professors (especially the young ones), high school teachers, students, secretaries, receptionists, telephone operators - adults who never talked that way before have become prime agents of the virus.

Uptalk is the inability to utter a declarative sentence without curling up your voice at the end to signify a question. Do you understand me? Are you still listening to me? Can I go on?

Declarative sentences have gone through some kind of politically correct meat grinder and have been turned into questions. I can easily remember when Canadians, even young ones, just stated their business - including simple things like their names - without curling their voices into a desperate plea for approval and understanding.

When I tell my students about this vocal habit, they often react as if they are hearing about it for the first time. Within days, they tell me: "I see what you mean. It's everywhere. I can't believe how much my friends and I do it."

Granted, uptalk is a lot harder to take when it's used continually and indiscriminately. Like any verbal tic, it becomes all the more grating when every sentence (even individual phrases within a sentence), is turned into a question. You might think uptalk would be reserved for difficult concepts, but it isn't.

What has happened to simply stating your piece? Has it become impolite to speak assertively in Canadian society? Every day, I hear the simplest statements turned into interrogatives. My name is Jennifer? I live in Guelph? I'm here to fix your washer?

They've all become questions. But what is at issue here? One's name? The location of one's home? One's job? Why can't those things be stated politely but firmly? Has tentativeness become the hallmark of polite discourse in Canada? Is it rude to sound confident? Must we seek consensus at every syllable with vocal inflections that say: I'm not sure about any of this. I can take it back at a moment's notice if it displeases you.

Not all of my colleagues agree with me. Mind you, there is little debate about the spread of uptalk or - as is the case with cigarette smoking - that young women are its biggest practitioners. The debate surrounds why people uptalk or whether they uptalk for a single reason. Perhaps they don't, but I think there's enough of a pattern to offer a working theory.

It's been suggested to me that uptalk is a direct descendent of Valley Girl talk. The thing is, Valley Girl talk never really caught on in the States. Its tentative, unsure nature never really fit the American psyche. So it moved north in search of different values. And what did it find? It found a culture known for politeness. A place where: "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing" is printed on restaurant placemats and embroidered on our souls.

Here in Canada, uptalk found a home.

Let me tell you about an unusually honest conversation I recently had with a student. I asked her about the use of uptalk and other interrogatives she strategically placed at the end of her statements. She paused reflectively and said: "I'll tell you exactly why I do it. I do it to tone down what I say. I don't want to come across too assertively. I'm afraid people won't like me or some of the things I say. I don't want to alienate my friends or the kids in class. This way, I can take the stuff I say back if people around me seem uncomfortable."

And there you have it. An admittedly small sample, but an insight from the lips of an actual practitioner.

So now we have at least one working theory on the table: Uptalk suspends a statement in some kind of social limbo until you get approval. No feathers ruffled. No friends lost. No opinions. No harm done.

When my British host wondered aloud about this non-assertive Canadian style of speech, should I have replied that we Canadians are so consumed with politeness and consensus-seeking that we can no longer state anything without checking in several times a sentence to make sure we haven't offended anyone?

I think we need to take a step back and listen to ourselves. Let's at least call attention to how we sound. Uptalk was barely present 10 years ago. Now it's threatening to infect all of us like some sort of conversational anthrax.

Understandably, Canada wants a distinctive cultural identity, but, please, not this! There are many things that make me proud to be a Canadian. Uptalk is not one of them.

Prof. Hank Davis is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology. This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.