Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 15:49:25 -0500

From: Beverly Flanigan FLANIGAN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: Re: Almost about dialect



The high tensed female voice is common here at OU too, but more

prominently so in non-southern Ohioans, it seems to me. The pitch is

high and the rate is so fast that often I cannot hear word segmentation

and have to ask the speaker to slow down. Student announcers on the

radio are among the worst (they've also never learned how to read aloud

with anything like normal intonation and pausing). I associate the

squeaky little-girl pitch with a desire to sound cute and "feminine" --

a backlash from a (perceived) masculinizing of women? Horrors.

Beverly Flanigan

Ohio University