The P* reading group will meet next Tuesday at 13:30 in room 002 (and on Zoom). This week, Jeanne will be presenting on ongoing research. Below is an abstract:
Creaky voice, also known as vocal fry, glottalization or laryngealization (Dallaston & Docherty, 2020; Davidson, 2021), has received public interest in recent years when the speech of many young female celebrities came under scrutiny, garnering diverse and controversial opinions. A widespread belief is that creaky voice is a vocal “fashion trend” (Anderson et al., 2014), comparable to uptalk and “valley girl” speak, all of which are often viewed negatively (Chao & Bursten, 2021).
Within the domain of linguistics, voice quality or phonation type refers to the pattern of vibration resulting from the configuration of the vocal folds during speech (Esling et al., 2019; Gordon & Ladefoged, 2001; Klatt & Klatt, 1990; Wright et al., 2019). Phonation types are situated along a continuum from voiceless (where the vocal folds are most spread), to breathy, to modal, to creaky and to glottal closure (where the vocal folds are most compressed) (Ladefoged, 1971).
It is well documented that phonetic and phonological factors, such as surrounding context, phrasal position and vowel type, influence phonation type (Wright et al., 2019). Variation in phonation type has also been said to convey pragmatic information (Laver, 1968; Yuasa, 2010) and characteristics of personal identity (Podesva, 2013; Podesva & Callier, 2015) in a variety of languages (Callier, 2013; Pillot-Loiseau et al., 2019; Podesva & Kajino, 2014; Sicoli, 2010).
Following-up on my P* presentation from last semester, I hope to present some preliminary acoustic data on creaky voice in both Canadian English and French speech from bilingual speakers.