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Clarion faculty debate ‘Gendering of Speech Patterns’ at lunchtime panel

March 17, 2017

Clarion University Seifert Series will present “Valley Girl, Uptalk and Vocal Fry: The Gendering of Speech Patterns” from noon to 1:30 p.m. March 22 in Carlson Library, Level A. The event is free and open to the public.

Linguists and media analysts have advised millennial generation women to change their speech in the workplace: Their way of communicating sounds less competent than men, it lacks confidence or, as some critics claim, their very tones are annoying. Is this trend a result of more women entering journalism and other fields that traditionally were male-dominated? Is this more of a generational issue?

Listen to a panel of faculty experts as they debate how speech is gendered. Myrna Kuehn, department of communication, Herb Luthin, department of English and modern languages, and Susan Prezzano, department of social sciences are panelists.

"Valley Girl, Uptalk, and Vocal Fry: The Gendering of Speech Patterns" is part of the 2016-2017 Seifert Cultural Lecture Series themed "United States of Gender." The panel is co-sponsored by the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.

Last Updated 1/11/21