I know I'm getting way too excited, but I lurve the web. This morning I had no idea that there was such a thing as HRT - High Rising Terminals - thanks for the lead, Peter.
Matt Seaton wrote about it last year. James Gorman, a teacher at NYU coined the phraseuptalk in 1993. Apparently Douglas Coupland (his site's been under renovation for ever) and most Canadians are key culprits.Cynthia Lemore did her PhD in "recurrent intonational rises". And I'm going to do my PhD on Chick Lit. Like, really.
Apparently it's a kiwi meets Clueless thing, with some social anthropology thrown in for good measure. I didn't even know my friend D might be a member of a "linguistic micro community". And I certainly don't think he's a valley girl.
Diane DiResta, author of Knockout Presentations: How to Deliver Your Message with Power, Punch and Pizzazz, is quoted as saying: "I believe it is also an outgrowth of our politically correct society where people tiptoe around their beliefs by monitoring their language. It's as if a person's tentative tone allows them to retract the statement if it is met with criticism or disapproval. People are afraid to take a stand." And she agrees that it's a menace to women trying to clamber the corporate ladder: "Uptalk robs them of credibility and authority. It is especially disempowering for women."
Sure, but where did Matt Seaton get Diana from? The golden rolodex under rentaquote?
And if "uptalk is close to the spirit of postmodernism, concerned with advancing relativistic, provisional statements - in contrast with the classic discourse of modernism, pronouncing absolute truths" then where do I stand? I think there are some absolute truths. And I'm certainly not a moral relativist.
Peter thinks it's even more annoying to use "like" to mean "said". And he was like, go on. And I was like, no way. But, like, I do that all the time. Whatever.
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