Voir Dire: The Vocal Fry Phenomenon and the Future of Public Speaking

I am currently paneled for a jury trial in criminal court. A number of folks have been released on cause, and the voir dire process will continue on Monday. I might get kicked off the panel, but who knows. Unfortunately, I am the kind of person people of all stripes and scruples want on a jury… But, this can only be good for the justice system.

If you have never been part of a jury selection process, I can tell you that it is one of the most interesting vehicles for people watching. For a vocalist, it is also an interesting venue for people hearing.

I do not now teach, but have in the past been a vocal technique coach for singers, actors and speakers. One of the current topics that is “trending”, if you will, through the conversations of among voice teachers has to do with the current phenomenon, found primarily among young millennial women, called “vocal fry.” As the name indicates, there is a sizzle that characterizes the sound of the spoken voice. This sizzle produces a very unattractive sound, as well as an unhealthy habit in vocal production. By unhealthy, of course I mean vocal production that is destructive to the health of the vocal cords of the individual.

It has been suggested that this speech pattern exists mainly among young women. I had ample opportunity to hear for myself, from among those in the jury room. Here are my primary observations:

·       Of the men, representing a spectrum of ages from roughly 25 to 70, none at all spoke with vocal fry. Many men of different ethnicities men had very melodic sounding voices, but even the most flat sounding voices (mostly from Caucasian males) did not have a sizzle.

·       There has been a respiratory cough going around, and it was apparent that a few people were recovering from such.

·       Among the women, those most likely to have a sizzle to their sound were women 65 and older or 35 and younger.

·       The one young woman who did not speak with vocal fry was a trained actress.

·       Olfactory evidence of cigarette smoke (I am sometimes burdened by my strong sense of smell…) played a role in the vocal production of some of the men and women in the courtroom.

These observations led me to the immediate conclusion that “fry” is due primarily to a lack of vocal support. This might stand to reason among some older women, but cannot be considered as a pat answer; young women are cultivating this sound, are hearing and imitating that vocal production. What can this mean?

My further observations drew me to make the following general observations. (I would be interested in any feedback on these observations.)

·       Many women do not speak with as much diaphragmatic support as men do.

·       Most of the women speaking with vocal fry were heavily engaged with their handheld technology, when outside the courtroom (where all were asked to turn off and stow the gizmos).

·       Most of the women speaking with vocal fry were professional women with post-graduate degrees; some said they currently supervise others in their workplaces.

·       I could tell that most of the women speaking with vocal fry were forcing their voices to be pitched lower is natural to their voice.

I will now proceed to brainstorm on what I observed.

We live in a society that does not value the spoken word, as once and time immemorial. I make this brazen assertion because, as the parent of school aged children, I know for a fact there is not enough public speaking required of our youth and that it is not actively taught, unless the youth are involved in drama and singing at school. Of course, every school is different, but I believe this to be true of many public and private schools. Because we are being taught to be more technically engaged and distracted consumers of devices that entertain us, we are less likely to entertain one another, even with the expedient in “face-time” of the gentle art of conversation. I go into coffee shops everyday, where groups of people are huddled, but not conversing with each other. People are more likely to email or text one another than to speak in person or on the phone. Tone and inflection are, it seems, modes confrontational, rather than illuminating and inspiring.

When I hear “vocal fry” from women, I wonder why it is cultivated. There is a sort of jaded sound to it. Is this meant to convey experience or competence? Often, when used, it seems to convey “attitude” or “entitlement”. Conversely, (particularly Caucasian) men flatten quite a bit of nuance from their speech pattern. Here is a leap: Could women be cultivating this sound due to the stresses of competition in a male dominated workplace? Could it be that women think this sound lends “authority” to what they say? Could men be flattening their tone in order to be perceived as less authoritarian?

I certainly hope not. I find the fried sound from women fatiguing and outright annoying, particularly when hearing it in voice after voice after voice… I find the flat tone from men uninspiring, if not outright boring.

As for the future of public speaking, this is what I think, for what it is worth. While there are many celebrities, pundits, sales people, actors, motivational speakers, advocates and politicians who get into our consciousness with vivid speech, there are too few examples of average people, in our everyday interactions, who can and do speak fluidly, articulately and with a full range of inflection and emotion, when the situation calls for it. (I realize that a steady diet of that could be overwhelming.) The normative seems to lean toward men of few words, and women who sound jaded or exhausted. People who are bilingual can perhaps resonate with this: We are losing the music of spoken English because we are not exercising it, for some reason or perhaps for various reasons.

It is a mistake to take public speaking (known formerly as oration) out of our education, just as it is a mistake to take handwriting out of our education. Each of these skills is extremely important toward exercising our creative capacities, as many studies have shown. Reliance on technology to be our primary medium of communication means that we are, bit by bit, byte by byte, losing our ability to communicate clearly, effectively and expressively.

I predict that those few who do manage to learn to be expressive, in their written and vocal communications, will by necessity become a first generation of modern scribes. Trained singers and actors will continue to serve that function, existing throughout history, variously known as bard, troubadour, fool, and prophet.  

Meanwhile, ladies, let’s lose the fry… It is an affectation most unbecoming. Gentlemen, don’t be afraid to bring color and inflection to your voice… If you need help to cultivate the natural potential of your voice, there are professionals, like me, who can help you with that. Impressions are made not appearance alone, but on how you sound, as well.

Your voice is your music—a music you carry with you, wherever you go!!! The human voice is a beautiful and expressive instrument, people!

Voir dire literally means “speak the truth,”  and cannot go unsaid that your voice is your unique vehicle for speaking truth to power. Please, exercise your instrument, take care of it and, most of all, use it well, in speech and in song! Don’t abuse it; use it, authentically and expressively.

The Failures of Technology and Communication in our Schools

My children have taken part in “tolerance” classes at school; every youth must participate. It is about tolerating differences and looking out for others, standing up against bullying. A website was created at the school, where students can upload art, video and blog entries that bring greater awareness to the issues surrounding bullying, in order to build lines of communication and strengthen the community, so that there will be less bullying. Several schools are supposed to be participating in this website project, and it is hoped that students and the greater community will interact with the postings.

This is supposed to be a win-win. It all sounds so good. Technology in the schools! Kids get to use all sorts of electronic devices and be 21^st Century Journalists of school culture! Students can use unlimited creativity to promote a positive cultural atmosphere at school!

When my son was taking the class last year, it was a simple matter of uploading his information via the computer in the classroom, the host computer for the site. He was also able to upload blog entries from home. There was no login page, but if he typed a forward slash, followed by “login” after the site URL, a login page would appear.

This year, even though he was no longer in the class, my son wanted to continue his participation in the project. I was pleased that he wanted to engage in something beyond a classroom requirement. He loves to write and has a lot of good ideas. He wants to be a good mentor to younger students.

For some reason, however, he was no longer able to access the login page. Every attempt resulted in a “Forbidden” message. My son approached the teacher of the class on numerous occasions to report his inability to login and upload blog entries, he was seeking help.

The teacher, on a few of these occasions said that the website was working just fine; students in his current class were having no problem putting work up on the site.

My son would return home and attempt to access the login page again, only to receive the “Forbidden” message again.

One time, the teacher’s aide suggested that there was a problem having to do with cookies and history. Maybe if we cleared those, my son would be able to login. Clearing cookies and history did nothing to help the situation. My son emailed the teacher through the school access system, detailing the error message and a continuing inability to access a login page. He met with the teacher the next day; told my son that we must be having problems with our computer.

Discouraged, my son came home and spoke to us about it. He had tried to deal with this himself, to no avail. He had been trying to upload blog entries all year, only to be told that it was a problem with our computer.

I told my son,  all of our equipment is working just fine. If there were anything wrong, you would not have been able to email the teacher.

I opened my laptop, opened my web browser, accessed the website and could see the problem right away: there is no login field on the home page. I typed “login” in the search field, and hit the enter/return key. Search results: Sorry, nothing found.

I sent my son to the library and to a neighbor’s house. Would their display of the home page for this site display a login field? No. Surprise, surprise, NOT!

I then looked more closely at the website. A more thorough investigation revealed that there were very few entries for this year, all entered on the same date in April, and again last February.

What is going on? My guess is that the kids in the class must post at least once, to fulfill a class requirement. They make that posting from inside the classroom. Once the requirement had been fulfilled, that was it; the kids didn’t bother with the website again.

Here was my son, who wanted to be involved in an ongoing project, being stonewalled by the teacher and his aide. This must mean: (1) neither the teacher nor the aide built the website, and don’t know enough to “fix” the problem or offer a solution; (2) the teacher doesn’t care if the website is relevant to the school or wider community; (3) the teacher and the school are unaware that the website is inaccessible from outside the confines of the school; (4) if aware, they don’t want to put any effort into doing anything about it.

For whatever reason, the final result is a sham.

And this, my friends, is the problem I see with the forced entry of technology in the classroom. We tax-paying parents are told that if our children are going to be ready for the latest jobs, they cannot learn in the traditional way—those ways are outmoded. We need fancy new equipment and the kids need to interact with technology to do their schoolwork. The results will be better, test scores will go up, graduation rates will be higher, and our kids will be better prepared for the workplace of tomorrow! The politicians and tech titans have their photo ops, and the vendors make a pile of cash. 

This is, to a great degree, both a sham and a shame. It is all about forcing school districts to make monstrous expenditures on equipment that will be outmoded from one year to the next, forcing some teachers into the role of webmasters who are really incapable of handling such a role, forcing most teachers to spend hours above their paper grading to duplicate grading information in awkwardly developed computer systems. There are no time savers, here; expensive systems push overworked teachers into electronic servitude at a great cost to the local communities. And guess what? The results of all this outpouring of money for tech is showing little in the way of measurable upward trends, at least, according to the many articles appearing in the newspapers on this subject.

2 x 2 = 4, whether the sum is written with pencil on a piece of paper or typed up in a computer document. Solving the problem is faster using a pencil and paper, using far less energy, making a smaller carbon footprint, than turning on a computer. Word processing is a fabulous innovation, but writing by hand also stretches the brain in ways that are now being reported.

The teacher of this class, an otherwise affable person, spent the entire year stonewalling my son, telling him he must be doing something wrong, rather than admit he doesn’t know how to solve the problem.  Or, worse yet, he doesn’t care to help my son be involved in building something on-going and relevant. Whatever the situation or intention, the teacher has actively misled my son.

I sat my boy down and told him what I suspected, and asked him to stop trying to make entries on the site. It is almost the end of the school year, now; don’t waste any more of your time on this. I am sorry the teacher couldn’t have been more forthright with you.

He said, I know. I’m disappointed; I really did want to continue to be involved in the project. I think I’ll start my own blog over the summer.

Good for you, I said (thinking to myself, whew! We didn't lose his interest in making a difference for someone else!)

I sent the following message to the teacher, by way of the awkward, expensive, over-burdensome system the school district purchased:

Dear Mr. H-----,



My son enjoyed making blog entries on the W------- Project site last year, while attending your class. He has tried at various times to post things from home this year (which he had done last year), but has been unable to do so because THERE IS NO LOGIN FEATURE on the web page. Adding "/login" to the URL does not bring up a login page, but instead displays a "Forbidden" message. I know he has asked for assistance, and I know he has been told that the problem is with our equipment or our connection. 


I can tell you this is NOT a problem having to do with any of our 5 different computing devices or our internet connection or cookies or history or anything of the kind. We went to the public library and had no luck on the library computers. We went across the street to a neighbor's house and found that they could not access a login page from their computer. There is NO LOGIN FEATURE or PAGE. Perhaps my son did not explain that clearly enough. I hope it is clear to you, now that I have explained it, what the problem is.

If people are required to login to the website to post, then there must be a LOGIN PAGE or LOGIN FIELD. I put "LOGIN" into the site's search field, and nothing came up.

From the home page, I was going to "contact us" using the provided email address, but when I clicked on the link, I received a message that this address could be a phisher, so I decided to contact you through the school access system instead. 



I would be really surprised if postings of any kind can be made to this website anywhere other than the host machine at L----- Middle School. However, if this is possible, my son would really like to know, so that he can add some blog entries. For example, is there a way to post from WordPress? If so, how would my child do that? 

Meanwhile, I think the webmaster for this site needs to work on it, unless it is only meant to be FORBIDDEN. It is certainly forbidding, at the moment.

I am sure the intent is for the site to be accessible and relevant to a wider audience.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

School ends next week, and my kids are moving on to High School next August.

Meanwhile, we hear about Mr. Facebook’s fabulous gift to local schools. I am sure that means the money will be shuffled momentarily into school district office, only to be spent immediately on the latest computers for the classroom. Great for the vendors' bottom lines. Headlines read: Tech Giant Invests In Kids. Smiling faces peer from photographs.

Is it really all about consumerism? It makes me wonder…

Life Intervenes

More attention seems to be focused on the fact that people allow themselves to be distracted by mobile devices. I am glad to hear this!

Distraction is a choice. Most of mobile devices are made to take messages, to pause, to stop, to turn off. There is no need for them to interrupt more important things in your life. And I am talking about things like:  paying attention to bodily needs and functions, being with your children, your elderly, your friends and significant others, engaging in solitary thought or mutual conversation, experiencing quiet or rest.

Distraction is a choice.

Many people have become obsessed with their distractions. Perhaps too many people have.

The question I would ask is this: are you fully alive when you are experiencing your technology, or is your technological conversation being made at the expense of other life aspects that may be more necessary, more engaging, more fulfilling and more healthy? What are you shutting yourself away from, when you choose distraction?

I know that there is a via media with regard to electronic media. I also know that people have been trained to purchase all the latest gadgetry, without being trained to socially conscious and respectful ways of using the apps and features, without training on how to discover -- or even that it is necessary to find -- a via media for their electronic usage.

People talk and talk and talk. It's a free country; you can talk if you want to. Blah, blah, blah. People talk about privacy, but they constantly give it up in public places. I hear about the infidelities and peccadilloes of many people I do not know (many I would not want to know, after hearing some of the stories) while I am with my family or even alone. Where do I hear these things? At the grocery store, the farmers market, the bank, the post office, the library, coffee shops, restaurants. The conversations are all one-sided, that is, I hear what the person is saying into the phone, but I can't hear the replies. I am glad of this. I don't want to know! I don't want to hear private information of others. It is not as if I am eavesdropping; no one can help overhearing the indiscreet commentary of others. When people talk face to face, voices modulate to make discretion possible. When people talk on cell phones, they battle with dropped signals and various levels of sound quality--this is seldom a recipe for discretion. Indiscreet behavior is modeled to children and other adults constantly.

And this is the point. Discretion. People have forgotten what that is. People have forgotten that even though thoughts run through your head, you don't have to speak all those words. People have forgotten that private conversations are really only those that are discreet, and by that I mean unheard by the public. People have forgotten that discretion is a useful social tool, perhaps more useful than all the electronic devices we have to "be connected" with.

But this is not the only problem. Our communication becomes evermore opaque and indirect.

Do we tend to leave messages, rather than speak to someone face to face?

Do we have email conferences, rather than speak to a primary person over the phone and disseminate a formulated plan for approval? I have to say, it is exhausting to deal with 30 to 50 emails, just to find out if 5 people can meet to discuss something.

Do we use public information forums as a place to rant our impotent rage against the things that irritate us or make us afraid? Does this solve our problem, or does it merely become a pathology?

Do we use our electronic tools as firewalls toward avoidance?

I am asking these questions because I want to know.

I live in what is laughingly referred to as the first-world, and it becomes less civilized, less willing to engage in true discourse, less democratic as the days increase.

If there is one thing I know, it is this:  life intervenes. Your socioeconomic status and the amount or quality of electronic equipment you own doesn't mean a hill of beans when that happens. Your distractions will likely have no say, hold no sway when life intervenes, though they might be of some nominal assistance, if used correctly.

Are you ready? Is any of us ready?

Trust me: your phone, your computer and your peripherals will all be waiting for you when you return from the intervention.

Between Time

The veil is thin
—oh, we are separated
(from sight, sound and touch),
but not by much;
the signs are palpable
that you are near,
as if just ahead,
behind or far to one side,
and the gardener of Eden
has just dropped
(or discreetly stood aside from)
a sign of you in my path
—a bird feather, a colored rock,
a soft leaf or a sound of watery music
that recalls your laughter—
to remind me;
even the wind conspires
to lay your hand on my shoulder.

Ah, precious are these moments we share,
even across the unfathomable boundary,
and I am profoundly grateful
for our continued conversation:
between time is, to me, all in good time.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Forest or Trees

Deeper into the forest of books go I,
but less seem to learn of them;
the thickets of words, veritable mazes,
of which depth is oft proclaimed,
soon wear out their glib welcome
and inevitably thin to the same weedy patch,
wet and reedy, murky and muddled,
that I have explored before
--but I desire more.

The in-depth studies, the colorful analogs,
the structured cases resemble less
the actual beauty of the forest or the tree
--and I desire more.

The universe smiles wearily at my dilemma,
the untamed wilderness yawns lazily at my feet,
and the wild unknown beckons me toward its reality
--and I desire its shore.

Didn't she know? they sigh, sharing their inward smile,
experience trumps book-learning, every time;

Desire, bared upon the open shore,
shall most surely find more.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Tower of Babel

Creation hangs on one word alone.

S’truth, one was the word, and
of one accord was the song,
by which the tower was begun.

But each ascending storey
found diversion and division.

The word splintered from one
into a world of words;
the people from friends
into nameless ranks of strangers.

At every turn, every new height
the plans and styles change;
right hand knows not left,
nor wants to.

The Witness had only to watch,
with heaviness of heart,
as the great structure
began its collapse from within.

unraveling into flames,
consternation and war.

From that time forward,
diversity has yet to discover
its sacred power to build.

No human tower shall ever reach God,
until the daughters of woman,
and the sons of man
remember that

Creation hangs on one word alone.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen

Some Reflections on Time and Technology

We live in a culture where we can have everything now.

We can talk to anyone, no matter where we are or when—even while we are operating a motor vehicle or anesthetizing a patient for a surgical procedure. Have we lost our senses of self-control and anticipation?

Partners go to the grocery store with a list, but still need to call home from the aisles to clarify or to question—sometimes more than once in the same trip. Have we lost the ability to exercise judgment?

We crave connection with people, and yet, it seems easier for some to send electronic mail messages, than to converse directly to a person on a phone. This gives rise to a trail of electronic messages, backing up in the incoming mailbox, because someone couldn’t have a conversation that would have taken a few minutes. One has to follow the trail of messages, even if only to see that one doesn’t need to respond. This takes time. Conferences are sometimes inadvertently run in this fashion. Real time conferences would seem to be more efficient, but no one has time to meet.

Those who send electronic messages, eschewing the opportunity of speaking directly with a person or a group, sit at the other end of the technological device(s), waiting impatiently for a reply.

Electronic messages take time to compose and send, to read and answer. You have to turn on an electronic device to do that. The device needs to be charged with energy. Is this the most efficient means of communication, if , for example, you live across the street from the person you are trying to contact? Perhaps we should think of the waste of time that emerges when we tally all the time we spend on the contraptions, rather than out in the world, talking and touching, seeing and breathing.

Words of wisdom that you heard, because they were spoken by particular a person in a particular way, by means of a certain emphasis, the inclusion of a smile, or some other nuance, stick with you your whole life. This is true even if the precise memory of the actual event, when the words were uttered, has faded. This is timelessness, that words can carry themselves across the span of a lifetime, and call to mind a living, breathing person.

Technology is wondrous, but it is a robber of time, as well a thin veneer of connection and communication. We have reduced our discussions to cute quips and sound bytes. I wonder, can words of wisdom stick in our head because they were sent to us via email? Have our thoughts also been reduced, to fit the medium? And our spirits?

This is unthinkable. But I want you to think on it, as I am thinking on it.

This life is an unfolding of time. While we are here, we fill our moments with the imprint of our existential experience, our struggles, our failures, our rebirths, our touch, our glances, our conversations, our laughter and our songs. This is time, and takes time to be well and truly spent.

The reduction of this wonder of time, unfolding through our very being, into sound bytes and badly typed quips saves nothing, says nothing and is worth very little. It will all be deleted in a second; which shows how important it all is in the scheme of things.

Is Texting Mightier Than The Sword?

“What is so cool is that we are all connected!” I heard this effusive comment in the grocery store, spoken by a man to the display of melons. Of couse, when he turned, I realized he had a phone dangling from his ear.

I confess to have been annoyed by this; I wanted to ask, “connected to what?” Sometimes, it seems to me that what we are truly connected with is our technological toys. I also sometimes think that our technology takes us for a walk, and not the other way around.

When my family was driving home from some event, recently, we were stopped at an intersection. My husband, who was driving, was about to make a right-hand turn when, from out of nowhere, a man on a bicycle shot off the sidewalk in front of the car, texting, while riding his bicycle. Texting! It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my life. Both of the man's hands were on the handlebars, somehow balancing his phone, open to it’s qwerty pad, and his thumbs were furiously flying.

My husband slammed on the brakes, and the guy on the bicycle responded by falling off of his bike in the crosswalk in front of us, dropping the phone.

Without looking to the right or the left, the fellow got up, scooped up the phone and picked up the bike, remounted it, and rode on, continuing to text. We had saved him from being road kill, and he didn’t even look our way.

This sounds like a classic entry for the annual Darwin Awards. And I ask, what was that all for? I would hazard the guess that it was not for some pithy discourse.

Because our technology allows us to, we blather. On and on we blather, whether it is by voice or by thumb, on and on we digitally promote the sound of our voice. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t call this conversation. Most of the single-side of conversations I hear are not noteworthy. Many are people yelling at each other, pretending that there is no audience to their drama. A woman actually snapped at me, on day in the grocery checkout line, “mind your own business” when I turned, startled at being barked at from behind. Groups of people walk in packs together, but are they talking to each other? No. Texting or tweeting others with cutesy one-liners about what they are doing right now. Couples in internet cafés, both parties with laptops open, not speaking to one another.

What I observe is that people, in their desire to be connected, are dividing themselves from a consciousness of what is going on around them. 

The loudness of all the blather is deafening.

The silence, in the absence of substantial real time discourse, is equally disquieting.