"Would you like fries with thaaaat?" Investigating vocal fry in young, female Canadian English speakers

Abstract

The vocal fry register has previously been detected in the voices of young women. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which vocal fry is present among young female Canadian English speakers and to investigate the attitudes people have towards speakers who exhibit vocal fry. To investigate the presence of vocal fry, we collected data from 21 female participants in an interview setting. The majority of participants exhibited vocal fry in their regular speech patterns, and this feature was more pronounced at the end of a phrase. Vocal fry is quite common at the end of a phrase or sentence; however, its use as a social marker has not been thoroughly studied. To investigate attitudes towards speakers with vocal fry, we collected data using an online questionnaire. Overall, we found the 56 male and female participants to hold negative attitudes towards speakers with vocal fry and positive attitudes towards speakers without vocal fry. Findings from this study will contribute to the growing literature on this vocal register.