"Passion" is dumb

The English language once had a word expressing romantic or apopleptic fervor, a word that even sounded like a sibilant storm, opening with a plosive, ending with softness. It denoted special extremity.

Now we have this.

My brother and I discussed the bewildering primacy of the term "passion" back when we attended the second JRW conference, many long years ago. Agents reacting to first pages, or discussing what they were looking for in queries and stories, bandied it about almost more than any other word. I began to wish it were possible to mute words on the entire internet, early in my first experience of querying.

Even when I was young (again, this was many moons ago), the word actually embarrassed me. Maybe because it still did have some power - and implications - back then. But I've never in my life said or thought or felt I was "passionately" in love with a person, and as proud as I am of my career and invested as I am in my work, "passion" is not and I actually hope never will be a word I apply to doing it. That would be ridiculous.

So The Atlantic's takedown of the absurdities we attach to job listing and hunting resonates with my cranky old heart - passionless as it may be.

Like that job, and like so many things, I spent a decent span of my twenties and thirties under the impression that I was supposed to feel apologetic. I didn't have a sexy job for which I held a white-hot torch; I hadn't even gone through specific education geared toward it. My teen years: I was a kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do or "become" and, as much as it was clear I was supposed to, I honestly didn't care enough to develop any fake passions for business or law or even the arts. Majoring in theater where I did cured me of interest in going into THAT - though it probably laid some groundwork for me as an author.

Students in the 80s who seemed into business degrees bewildered me for directing their lives at, basically, just making money - not even making actual things, or having any impact on anything. Graduate school seemed like a lot of work, so a lot of what are referred to as "The Professions" (as if nothing else is) didn't draw me for a second. School for creativity seemed oxymoronic, and yet was the only way I could comprehend to become any sort of artist, and so if there ever had been a visual or musical or other sort of artist inside me (there wasn't), I'd have killed it myself, striving for it.

I never developed a groove that had anything to do with making my living.

Beloved Ex, now. He was a different story. He wanted very much to find a way to make a living that energized him mentally, emotionally. It didn't help our brief marriage, unfortunately, because by the time a truly stunning opportunity came for him - it meant rooting ourselves in Ohio, and I freaked out hard core, and ... yeah, I didn't want to sabotage his opportunity, but I did, AND I didn't want to stay in Ohio. And I didn't. Lots of birds killed with that boulder, and that boulder ... welp, it was passion, in its way.

For me, life's always been lived outside of any office. I make friends, sure. I have experienced strong loyalties and many emotions, in a hundred offices from here all the way back to Ohio. But, at the end of the day, I would never have gone into any of them if they weren't paying me.

Passion's for poorly written poems. It's been no way for me to get things done.

Doesn't make me any less excellent at what I do for a paycheck. Doesn't mean I do not care. I'm not a customer service ninja (which sounds like a bad idea, honestly, what with the kill-y parts of ninja-dom - though, really, the Orientalist stereotyping of "ninja", "sensei", and "guru" is a problem, and also, why are so many of the terms noted like this?), I don't lose sleep at night dreaming naughty dreams of vendor management or the passionate joys of meeting preparation. You want an obsessive or any other kind of job-extremist, I'm not your candidate - and, honestly? I think MOST PEOPLE aren't.

MOST JOBS, let's be candid, are just jobs. They're not sexy, they're not hot lovers, they're not things that get our motors revving. If we're fortunate, and have the right kind of approach, the best most of us can expect from employment is the opportunity to work a good puzzle. Figure out how best to do a thing, then do it, and feel like a rockstar for widgeting, or networking, or calming down some numbers that get uppity.

"Job" is not a word stormy with sibilance. It doesn't start plosive, but with a chop. It ends utilitarian, not reassuringly with a nice, soft N. It's short and ordinary and gets its work done efficiently, nondescriptly.

And it's one of the great words in most of our lives, when we're lucky enough to get one that doesn't beat us down but does provide security. Maybe it gives more than merely that. Great!

But work is work.

They don't call it rapture, for good reason.

Collection

"(T)he falling cost of renewable power changed the calculus" of energy sources. A pretty compelling statement about nuclear power, from the guy who headed the NRC for years. Okay, then.

Sarmatian mortuary objects came up, for me, as I was researching The Ax and the Vase many years ago, and I've remained intrigued at this culture. Recently, a burial was found - looks like a VIP ... worth the click if only to take a look at the absolutely exquisite horse's head ornament found in the grave. Clovis' father, Childeric, had a horse burial (as well as a bee burial)

Swear to Maud, K.D., I just bought a wrap dress. (To be fair, I am nobody's idea of a romantic heroine.) On writing quibbles, rage-inducingly bad ideas, and other fun, from K.D. James. (Also, yes, the date of this post gives some idea of how long it's been since I was doing my regular blog rounds. Apologies to those I have neglected.)

Of more recent vintage, hooray, a new post from The Arrant Pedant! It doesn't even matter what it is, just go, read, enjoy. He's OSUM. (Okay, what it is is a linguist's view from a uniquely spelled name. Now go read!)

Now. Here's the thing about history: it's not a game, not even a dynamic with winners and losers, good and evil. It's deep and complex, it's diverse and layered. It's MESSY. There isn't anyone alive who doesn't simplify it with their slightest allusion to it ... but not all of us get punished for that. But lately? Any punishment in a storm, and the political era we're enduring is one long shit-storm. We need to be careful about punishing people with, or about their invocation of, history. Click on, for a well-organized, concise history of the origins of the modern country of Israel.

Finally, can the literal dress of a racist, patriarchal past be reclaimed from its worst implications? Yes, fella babies: for the first time in a long time, it's a fashion link at last. And don't forget the click beyond, an interview about the Little House books, and the Wilder women.

Collection

WOW, this is a fascinating piece of legal history and a wide-ranging look at civil forfeiture. When journalism goes this deep into stories, I can't tear myself away. And the story is a moment of "bipartisan" cooperation (yes, theoretically the SCOTUS is not supposed to be party-based, but we all know perfectly well that's hogwash). An excellent read because it's great writing, engaging storytelling, relevant and hopeful history.

T-Rex at the American Museum of Natural History. NEATO-SPEDITO! Don't even pretend you don't want to see this.

I grew up with the affectionate use of "am" in my house. White and Southern and old as I am, this wasn't correlated to Black American speech, though we were familiar with the stereotypes. The "am" was just linguistic overlap, though its tone of juvenilization/baby-talk usage has a distinctive paternalism, viewed alongside the hideously racist exaggerations of blackface speech. In our family, it was our intimacy: dad would ask us or our friends, "How am ya?", but it was certainly not a greeting he used with colleagues. I'm fascinated to see the roots that am between us. I'm also reminded of the long-held belief that Appalachian American speech preserved Elizabethan English for centuries - the truth of which is delightfully more complex than "yes, it did" or "no, it didn't." The lineage of Black American English is more complex than its reception has generally allowed. It's hard not to want to protest, "but my dad wasn't racist" ... even as it's impossible not to see the Colonial heritage of a language long-shared only because of slavery.

Once again, Diane's fascination with the archaeology of poo ... oh man - "comes to the fore"? "raises its head"? I'm not sure how to put this that isn't lame scatalogical humor. Anyway: NEATO, it's excremental science again! This time, on the moon. <Resists the Schrödinger's poo joke> Go! Learn the wonders of human contamination in space ... or the secrets of seeding (cue echo-boom voice effect) LIFE ITSELF.

Collection

It happens all the time in casual speech—saying carpe diem rings deeper and graver than “use time wisely.

I know I link The History Blog a lot, but here is a post resurrecting one of the old interests at my own blog, which I haven't touched on in a long time: jewelry design. Take a look at the simply stunning geometrical engraving on this remarkably preserved bulla. Exquisite.

Tom Williams' blog has a great discussion about authorial exposure, participation, and the many varieties of advice authors can find online, on his 12/14 post - this is one of those times I will say, "READ the comments!" (FWIW, I actually do get more engagement on my personal posts, but I think the past few years of caregiving and death have led me to tap into some thoughts and themes that resonate - and, given a lack of actually getting this blog OUT there, those posts are the ones that bring people to pipe up.)

Per usual for this year, I am running short on content but don't want to leave this post in Drafts any longer, so please enjoy these photos of December snow, decorations, and The Poobahs. My spirits of the season ...

SNOWCAKE!

Penelope side-eye is the BEST side-eye

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Collection

(I)f there’s one thing women* don’t need, it’s another reason to feel unwelcome...
(*or anyone)

For all the brouhaha about political correctness, and my own grappling to find the line(s) I will not cross, and the boundaries to delineate in interaction with others, I've never found a better phrase than the now-problematic "PC" itself. Thank you to Joel Kim Booster for providing the best conceptualization: "As a human being, I find accountability to other people extremely important... I don’t think we’re really willing to do that math. Is this joke worth being an asshole?" This laser-focuses the fact of community, of the dynamics of interaction. Also, this is a nice, multifarious view of retroactive linguistics. Balance.

"The politics of a Dick Wolf police procedural are simply less visible to many—including, apparently, Wolf himself—because they mirror the politics of the privileged. For middle-class and affluent white people, a pro-police, pro-institution worldview is apolitical because it’s neutral to them. It is neutral to Dick Wolf. That worldview is not politically neutral for black men, or trans people, or victims of sexual assault, or impoverished people, or basically anyone who isn’t a wealthy white person." It is unnecessary for me to add anything to these words but the link.

Art. It's cool. It's wearable. Let's take a breather from my recent posting and look at neat wearable art - more than mere costume, here we have musings from science fiction to avant garde to "red" to under-the-microscope entries. I think my favorite is Quantum, but "shell" packs a pointed punch today of all days.

Collection

I have long felt this way about the (w)racking of the nerves. Oddly enough, though, I don't mind seeing either spelling. Free rein, however, reigns for me.


Okay, THIS THIS THIS THIS SO VERY THIS, when it comes to complaining that Al Franken is out but the GOP tolerates worse abusive and demeaning behavior than his. "There is a difference between the actions of Harvey Weinstein (accused of rape) and Franken (accused of forced kissing and groping women). But that doesn’t mean women should have to choose between the two. The ideal is none of the above." (Emphasis added.)

And here we are with one of those sites I always depend upon ("Too much?") for Collections posts, with a great pairing:

You may have heard of the partially mummified baby, but The History Blog, as they always do, has excellent background of its own along with their usual collection - ahem - of links. Make with the clicky for the clicks beyond on this story! Also: yay, science!

THB link #2 *may* not be for the squeamish - note, the words "gnaw" and "bones" occur togehter in an analysis of burial practices. But, for my gravedigging money (there's no research like grave goods!), funerary finds are the richest finds of all. So make with the clicky here, if you can stand the phrase "four pelvises on a stick" in service of a REALLY interesting look at Celtic warfare and military burial.

Collection

Surface tension linguistics - how cities and bubbles build dialects. This is an article about population centers and the creation of dialects; fascinating research for *most* writers, I might say.

A very cool look at developmental spelling science, because there is NO SUCH THING as too many linguistics links, and kids' brains are neato.

Can you imagine a policy that prohibits white girls, many of whom are born with straight hair, from wearing their hair straight? Absolutely not!

White readers: imagine having your hair policed. It's all but inconceivable to you, right? The politics - and systemically discriminatory policieis - of hair. For anyone who finds themselves distracted by braids - the problem is not the hair: it is your perception of the person whose hair it is. It is you.

Okay, a lighter note. Now imagine a world without windshield wipers! Well, that's messy. Score one for the woman who invented them - thank you, Mary Anderson! "She didn't have a father; she didn't have a husband and she didn't have a son. And the world was kind of run by men back then."

Kind of.

History! Now that we've had time to cool off about the U.S. election (or not), how about a look at another electoral upset that was so profound it ended an entire type of democratic process? The fact that ostracism is still practiced - just not with pottery - doesn't lessen the interest of this story! Courtesy of Gary Corby.

And a click beyond worth a little blurb all its own here in Collection-post town, a little further reading in Gary Corby's blog took me to the Met's FREE ONLINE DIGITAL BOOK COLLECTION. Holy drooling reading/history/art nerd Heaven! FREE BOOKS, y'all! Available to read online (Google Books), for download to PDF, or print-on-demand. A look at the very first title displays a good, clear digital copy, too. So: free and clear. Literally. (So many puns...)

Collection

Donna Everhart celebrates making it halfway through a WIP. I very, very literally have no idea what that is like - because I don't know when it is.

"(B)limey, what's that?" Simultaneously cool and creepy, BBC shows us one of the creative innovations in security, as the global definition and even concept of privacy leeches away. "The ability to choose when and how to divulge information about ourselves is one of the things that make us human, argues graphic designer Leon Baauw"

Also at BBC online, this piece of art and science history took my breath away, but do be warned, for the squeamish there exists the possibility this could take your lunch away. Have you ever heard of dissectable "Venus" waxworks? The art is incredible - but, for a historical novelist like me, the look into the psychology of another age, the attitudes, is INVALUABLE. These sculptures are eerie and undeniably lovely.

More RULES for writers! Y'all know how I love those. Still, analyses like these do yield some intriguing data. Such as: the average published author relies on about 1/4th as many exclamation points as the average amateur writer. (I am not published, but if I had ten exclamation points in both my novels combined, I'd be surprised.)

Ever since learning what vocal fry is, I have become fascinated by the science of speech. Here is a GREAT piece on hating women's voices:





"[By] propagating ideologically inspired amoral theories, business schools have actively freed their students from any sense of moral responsibility." Depressing, but certainly true. Take a look at Newsweek's in-depth piece about the ascendancy of the shareholder - a pretty good history of Wall Street and business education over the past generation.

Have you ever been to a marketplace where haggling is common? Many Americans have not, but I have smiling memories of "special for you!" pricing on a vacation or two. The Atlantic analyses some of the history - and the future - of the way we shop. Hmmmmm.

Collection

Random thought: how about … never trust anyone (man or otherwise) who decides anyone (woman or otherwise) must not be TRUSTED on the basis of any aspect of their personal tastes?

Let it be said: The Telegraph is not my favorite UK paper. But they have a couple good links now and then.

First, their list of 30 great opening lines from literature . It's a nice breadth of recent centuries and authors. To read them all at once makes for interesting inspiration; even in a single sentence, the different novels take you to different places and introduce us to a variety of characters. Well worth the look, for my writer and reader readers!

Next, just this quote, though it's only one from a longer series. Anyone would know I'd agree with the sentiment, but in keeping with my Illusions of Recency posts, it's looking at the date on this one that'll either sober you up quick or reassure you somewhat about today.

Star Trek: Axanar and the legal aspects of copyrighting Klingon. What a fandom buzzkill, Paramount. Fan produced for *generations* (b’doom pssshhhhhhh) have been fun, hallowed, and even considered canon www.startrekcontinues.com at times. So much for that thing where “CBS has a long history of accepting fan films” and “…realizes that we’re just making their brand that much better.”. Bummer. With thanks to Dena Pawling for pointing to the suit.

Sunday Collection

Gossamer is currently FLAT on the living room floor, even his chin - tail swishing, and in stalk mode. He got a new toy for his adopt-iversary, and he likes it. (7/14 marked our fourth year since he first came home with me.)

The house is clean, and another project I have going in the basement is going well.

The world at large and at small seems to be a difficult place of late. We all know the large pictures. On the personal scale, someone I know just found out a parent was discovered dead at home with their pets also deceased. One of my oldest friends is dealing with the latest variety of symptoms of several chronic, incurable diseases, her husband may have pneumonia, and her father is heading in for minor (we pray) surgery Tuesday. My stepfather continues a precipitous decline from the ongoing status that he is dying in the first place.

Distractions are in order. And so, ironically, my first link today will echo the points made here ...

Advanced Style (the documentary) looks at the denial of death by way of fashion in a way more uplifting than my post above. When death comes closer, denial of it can be more affirming than oblivious, and the result is literally and figuratively beautiful. There is also a blog, which goes beyond NYC. Everything about Beatrix Ost's style, I adore. The boots look like American Duchess!

I'm not a great follower of celebrity, and so to me Jennifer Aniston is one of those word-pairs that generally keeps me from clicking. And yet, something or other got me here last week, and I have to admit: if this is her actual voice, her words, I entirely respect her thinking. On the subject of her own celebrity - and the resultant headlines about her life (and fantasies projected thereupon).

Less escapist, but something I have followed for about a dozen years; the FLDS church, the Jeffs family's power, and escape from Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. In the wake of the recent escape of Lyle Jeffs, this is especially relevant and important to know.

There’s not always one right answer. Sometimes you just have to pick one and stick with it.

The Arrant Pedant is always a pleasure, but especially so when he deconstructs prescriptivism. In this book review, I especially appreciate his points on consistency. Sometimes, it's more about choosing your approach than knowing there is any single "right way".

Collection

My mom recently learned the phrase "food porn", and she has had the slightest bit of fun and a certain moral consternation at the use of a dirty word (porn itself is a dirty word) to describe an apparently wholesome, if pointless, exercise. This one's for you, mom: The Arrant Pedant on how to tell a hot dog isn't porn ... or a sandwich.

... and, if you're the type who'd like that musical moment wiped out of  your brain, how about a run through the Prelinger film archive, digitized home of an eye-popping variety of clips, from advertising, to what my mom could legitimately call porn (vintage) to instructional films of the quaintest kind. Watch out, some of the 1961 prom kids are dancing AWFULLY close! (Semi-obscure cultural aside, some of the young ladies in 1961 gripped their long skirts in exactly the same incorrect way the generally-perceived-to-be-tacky women on reality shows do today with their would-be formal wear.)

Dena Pawling brings us more legal hilarity - on Citigroup's suit against AT&T for the use of "thank you." More proof that lawsuits are EVEN stupider than people sometimes. And we know how stupid people are.

I'd swear I wasn't sharing this link because it touches on Snorri Sturluson, which is one of my favorite names in the history of ever - but yeah, Snorri is right up there with the surname Snoddy and Hoyt Axton for OSUM names. Okay, okay - and the story here, which is about Vikings and a famed ivory chess set carved by a woman now called Margret the Adroit, intrigues me. Her name is bad-motor-scooter too, and I am officially fascinated with her as a character. Bonus name: Gudrid the Far-Traveler. (For those who ever find themselves in mind to buy me books, feel free to click through for a couple of ideas.)

Snobbery, Fashion, and Manners of Speaking

The vocal fry thing was only the beginning.

In recent months, verbal linguistics have been a constant obsession. I keep noticing how speedily pronunciations are evolving, and thinking about how they have changed in the past.

Watching films made in the 1930s, I get a sense of the vogue way to speak when my grandmothers were young - what "modern" used to me - and I wonder how their voices differed from one another in their primes, based on the way I remember them before they died. Both Virginian, but from different places, different backgrounds. I can still hear my mom's mother's voice fairly clearly in my head.

Listening to younger women now - and knowing that, though my generation's ears often find it annoying and even unintelligent-sounding, vocal fry and creak are now considered signifiers of education and success - I listen for different types of this evolved valspeak, and try to understand where the annoying affectations of my own youth became the worthy attainments of a new age ... and I wonder how quickly another mode of speaking will take over, what *is* taking over, and how these things will sound to those finding their own, new voices. How quickly fashion will change.

I wonder, too, how much of this occurred - how quickly speech changed - before media developed and burgeoned and kept us constantly aware of how we and others sound. Those thirties movies came at an era when image was literally projected for the first time, and sound became an emblematic part of fashion.

Clearly, language has always changed its sound. If new ways of speaking had not always superseded old ways - in coinage, but just as fundamentally in sound and emphasis - we'd still be speaking in what we now like to call proto Indo-European roots.

It's hard not to think recorded sound and image have not affected the speed with which these changes occur. It seems only yesterday I was complaining about the ubiquity of people emphatically growling HUJAPASSENT to indicate their certainty about something, and now I haven't heard it in months. Already out of vogue? I'm not even sure when I last heard curate; but artisinal has been fairly popular for a couple of years.


Getting out of coinage trends and looking at pronunciation, current fashion sounds to fogeys of (say) my Certain Age ... well, actually infantile. There is a trend for both overstatement and inaccuracy in diction, and some of the inflections and emphases echo those of a child just learning to speak.

A sampling of pronunciations which seem to be crossing regional lines, so do not appear to be related to particular accents:

Overdone ...

           diDINT (didn't)

           JOOLuhree (jewelry)

           feahMAlee (family)
           FOWurd (forward)

           MEEkup (makeup)

Underdone ...

           fill (feel)
           housiz (houses - first S sibilant)         
           uhMAYzeen (amazing)

           BEEdy (it took me some patience to understand this as a pronunciation of "beauty")
           BEDdur (better**)
 

The intensity of emphasis on consonants in middle of a word reminds old folks like me of a liddle kid's care in speaking words still new to their tongues - training the tongue to every part, every syllable of a word. It is adorable in a three year old, the way a toddler's emphatic way of walking is cute, as they learn refined balance.

In an adult - to more elderly adults - all this sounds considerably strange.



Here's where it gets REALLY interesting:

Considering how strange my slurring and curiously unsyncopated manner of speech must sound to those putting (let's face it) so much more effort into their speaking.

At Janet Reid's blog yesterday, we touched in the comments on the concept of dated voice, looking at slang and its changes since the 80s. But the actual mechanics of my tongue and lips, trained in a different generation, are themselves probably a giveaway of my age.

In the same way that, say Rosalind Russell's or Katherine Hepburn's youthful staccato and volume make people think that the acting in old movies was unnaturalistic, perhaps - my own seventies and eighties infused rhythms and inflections are distinct from the modes of speech in the under-thirty-five set right now, and probably sound artificial, if not downright lazy. It may be a more accurate signifier of my age than the old "check a woman's hands and elbows to see how old she really is" thing.

And oddly enough: Rosalind Russell was the absolute mistress of vocal creak ...

**Lest we think I'm talking only about female voices;

some of the most egregious infantile pronunciation currently available... 

On Vocal Fry, Bitterness, and Being a Woman

Oh squee, we have another recency illusion! On the evolution of the valspeak vocal fry: a LONG podcast, but a most interesting one, including as it does such an intensity of apparently unironic white male self-congratulation and feminine condemnation. For shorter, written pieces with a more interesting and scientifically useful bent, take a look at the debunking of the habits of vocal fry and uptalk as a privileged little American girl fashion (from the NYT – a really good look at the phenomenon and its *strategic* [defensive] utility), and here, the personal story of a woman who took a stab at rehabilitating her vocal creak – and then didn’t.

Full disclosure: I am EXTREMELY guilty of judging young women by their voices. I have ranted alone at my television and even talked with my mom about the buzzy, baby voices younger women use – the very picture of the judgmental old lady in my hatred of the sound. There will be a long and serious review of how much of my prejudice is born of self-hatred (my own tendency to valspeak as a kid, and many years of self-training to get over the noise) and how much of it is the bigotry born of age and the privilege that my own voice is so often *heard*. From the NYT link … "young women were generally interrupted more than men and so it’s a defense mechanism" …

In a mental review of the voices of the women and some of the men I love, there appears little creak among them, but uptalk (rising terminal inflection) is very common. My mom has a strong voice, and just on Christmas, I heard once again what I have heard since I was nine or so, that I sound just like her. I take this as a compliment; my mom has a jolly way of speaking. My oldest friend, TEO, has a soft way of speaking, but not lacking for authority; she is a mother and a teacher, and speaks smoothly and gently, but is not breathy. She uses lilt in the strategic ways noted in the New York Times article, and may not always assert dominance with her voice, but her confidence is complete.

Cute Shoes has a particularly beautiful voice. Low but never nasal and buzzing, she uses uptalk inflection with precision – again, a mother, and a professional manager, she nudges vocally with great effect.

My brother sometimes uptalks – he is a father of two girls, and guides them with a questioning voice, prompting them to display what they know, rather than telling them as if they don’t.

Mr. X, a man of six-feet-four and an impenetrably dour resting expression, can appear physically intimidating in a way, but has a manner of speech that focuses on his breath in a way that makes it more noticeable to me than I find it to be in other people. His speech most often is quiet, modulated. Modulated or even regulated. His breath is plosive, strong as Rowan Atkinson speaking the letter “B”, if he’s pressed to humor or surprise or passion. But most of the time, his voice is held back; he speaks with what I’d describe almost as another kind of “creak” – the softness of restrained pressure. I think of the way he says “Hello” on the phone, or the first time I really heard him speak, and am struck by the idea he often seems almost to be holding his breath. It’s not an unnatural sound – he doesn’t seem strained – only holding in reserve; typical of him psychologically too.

My dad had a warm and gravelly voice. No creak there, just the patina of a man of great experience, some years of smoking, even more of teaching, many of parenting, and all of loving. Like the satin-ing silver sheen of wood handled and handled again over long ages, it was strong and beautiful and deep and weathered. I can’t remember my dad’s voice at thirty; but, by sixty-five, he had a distinctive, soft growl.

Even dad used upspeak, though. He prompted his students, pulled his kids along on the upturned lilt of the inflection of his sentences, not all of them interrogative. His rising terminal was unlike that we think of when the term “uptalk” crops up – a promontory, not a steep rise. A place inviting you out to its tip, to take a look at the vista.



In 1981, still in middle school, I had left the small world of grade school behind, and came across people with the early-80s Eastern hippie inflected speech that seemed to me then and now to share a lot with what we soon were calling valspeak. Then high school, Zappa’s daughter, horizontal-striped shirts with puffed sleeves … and my own regrettable teenage speech.

Maybe I don’t really regret it.

But I did spend some years in remediating it.

I was never raised to be a woman out to form myself in the shape to please a man, but one or two points my dad made about the appeal of a woman did strike home (eventually). The major one was that a woman walks with grace, not a bounce. I feel like I saw Grace Kelly swiftly descending a long staircase, a long gown hiding all evidence she owned legs and feet, her head smooth as if on a gimbal, yet clearly RUNNING down, to catch a Cary Grant perhaps, in “To Catch a Thief” – but the image stays with me, real or imagined, transplanted from the wrong movie or not – that was grace the thing, in Grace, the woman.

Grace was one of the few things dad exhorted upon me as his girl child, and it’s not one I ever resented – and another measure of grace, aside from movement (which I cannot generally do so beautifully) is a womanly, beautiful voice.

I may not have attained any more beauty in my voice than in my physical comportment – but it is true I treasure the compliment once received, that my voice sounds like brownies baking.

It used to be I’d get joked at, “You should have your own 976-number.” This was a thing, kids, twenty years ago when porn was performed live by phone – and presumably I had a SENSUAL voice, which may or  may not have been typical of real sex-operators’ voices, but the general idea was meant to convey that I sounded good. (Or quite naughty …)

And, of course, the oldest comment of them all, “You sound like your mother.”

At work, in particular, I cultivate a variety of voices – for “my kids”, a warm and southern style – for new calls, professional and modulated, lapsing easily into laughter and friendliness where possible – or occasionally slipping toward interrogative-inflected passive (aggressive) voice, depending on how things need to be guided.

With my friends, mom, and brother, I like to think I am most often laughing or listening. We like to think a lot of positive things about ourselves, I suppose …

What about you?

100%

I have to remind myself, I was a "like, TOTALLY" girl.  I was, like, totally sure.  Though not what we used to call a Val, I was lousy with verbal tics it was wisest to shed before I turned twenty-five.

I have to remind myself, wasting energy finding the way Kids Today speak irritating doesn't make me superior - and, in any case, it's hardly only Kids Today whose speech irritates me the most.

Some of the newer slang I really like a lot.  "Acting like you're brand new" has a great evocative sense to it, and is a lot more fun and interesting than "Don't be disingenuous."

Some wears out with astonishing speed.  "Amazing" has, in less than a decade, entirely changed in meaning (or, at least, *usage*) from "awes and surprises" to "ohmigosh, that guy/house/car/food/cheesy internet top-ten list is so great!"

Much of the way American language-usage has changed in the past generation is just interesting, apart from pedantic superiority - the sheer proliferation and speed of language dedicated to the way technology has affected lifestyle alone has filled volumes already, and is an ongoing problem/opportunity/frustration for not only those interested in linguistics, but pretty much all of us in a world where "e-mail" has already taken on the quaintness of now obsolete, new-fangled phrases once so quaintly hyphenated at the turn of the twentieth century.

A recent emphatic which has taken on a new specific form and proliferated with the speed and intensity of a virus is HUNJAPASSENT.  This is the assertive pronunciation applied to "hundred percent" - signifying an overly vigorous application of denial, assurance or, less often, agreement.  The intriguing point with this phrase, for me, is that it is pronounced with remarkable consistency across accents.  It has the feel of an outsider trying to sound New-York-y; not quite the native shape of any accent, and almost inflection free.  Since every syllable of it is delivered with an almost plosive power (from what I've seen and heard of it, emphasis is just about always just shy of an actual shout), it is a single unit, a brick of a modifier, functioning as adjective, adverb, denial, affirmation, fighting words, support.  Men and women both deliver it with this curious homegeneity.  "I agree with you, HUNJAPASSENT."  "I never did that, HUNJAPASSENT."  And it always seems to be an "I-statement", come to think of it.

I haven't heard it southern-twanged into "hunnerperSINT" as might have seemed likely in my neck of the woods - nor even heard that J elided at all, as many American dialects might do with other formations.  It seems clear that a part of its procreative appeal is the powerful sound, even the way it must feel to speak it, physically underscoring the verbal in a way that adds to the sense of communication the way some speech magically does.

It's the "Worst. Episode. Ever." of 2014 - and the Period. Between. Every. Word, at that.  It's "totally" for the next generation.  Maybe it'll even eclipse this new "amazing" I've heard so much about; certainly its ubiquity and nimble functionality lend to the same implications.  "He's the hottest thing - HUNJAPASSENT."  It could work.

But HUNJAPASSENT seems mostly to be a negative term, emphatic and powerful almost to the point where it can intrinsically beg its own questions.  Perhaps I've been watching too much television (I have been, with Broadcast all I have in my living room lately ...), but what I've seen of it tends to be defensive and, oddly enough, kind of tenuous.  It feels right up there with "trust me" for statements that set me on guard as to whatever is asserted.

I. Did. Not. Have sex with That Woman.  HUNJAPASSENT.

Have you been hearing 100%?  Or have you been hearing usage innovations that drive you bananas or kind of tickle your brain a little?