Do You Creak?
Listen to Slate’s show about the much-reviled phenomenon, prominent among young American women, of “creaky voice.”
Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 24: Get Your Creak On
In the early 1980s, Valleyspeak—with its liberal use of “like,” totally grody vocabulary and high rising terminal—swept the nation with the help of surf culture and Frank Zappa and signaled for many the coming end of the world. Although we somehow managed to endure that frightful fad and beat back the apocalypse, doomsayers—including our own Bob Garfield—claim that yet another pox is now upon us. Researches have identified that a phenomenon known as “creaky voice,” a kind of speech affect that sounds like staccato bursts from the back of the throat, is especially prevalent among young American women. Sound familiar? Listen as Bob and I discuss the creaky among us.
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