The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as rising inflection, upspeak, uptalk, or high rising intonation (HRI), is a feature of some variants of English where declarative sentences can end with a rising pitch similar to that typically found in yes/no questions. HRT has been claimed to be especially common among younger speakers and women, though its exact sociolinguistic implications are an ongoing subject of research.
Intonational characteristics Empirically, one report proposes that HRT in American English and Australian English is marked by a high tone (high pitch or high fundamental frequency) beginning on the final accented syllable near the end of the statement (the terminal), and continuing to increase in frequency (up to 40%) to the end of the intonational phrase. New research suggests that the actual rise can occur one or more syllables after the last accented syllable of the phrase, and its range is much more variable than previously thought.
Usage In the United States, the phenomenon of HRT may be fairly recent, but is an increasingly common characteristic of speech, especially among younger speakers. However, serious scientific and linguistic inquiry on this topic has a much more extensive history in linguistic journals from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain, where HRT seems to have been noted as early as World War II. It has been noted in speech heard in areas of Canada, in Cape Town, the Falkland Islands, and in the United States, where it is often associated with a particular sociolect that originated among affluent teenage girls in southern California (see Valleyspeak and Valley girl). It was observed in Mississippi in 1963 (see "Twirling at Ole Miss" in Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes). Elsewhere in the United States, this tonal pattern is characteristic of the speech heard in parts of the rural upper Midwest that have come under the influence of Norwegian phonology through Norwegian migration to Minnesota and North Dakota. Although it is characterized in Britain as "Australian question intonation" (AQI) and blamed on the popularity of Australian soap operas among teenagers, HRT is also a feature of several Hiberno-English dialects, especially mid-Ulster and Belfast English. Research published in 1986, regarding vernacular speech in Sydney, suggested that high rising terminal was used more than twice as often by young people than older people, and was more common among women than men. In other words, HRT was more common among women born between 1950 and 1970 than among men born before 1950. The same research (and other sources) also suggested that the practice often served to discourage interruption, by indicating that a speaker had not quite completed a particular statement. High rising terminal also occurs in non-English languages, such as in Arabic (Iraqi Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Lebanese Arabic), Amharic, Cham, Tuvaluan, French, and Dominican and other varieties of Spanish.
Effects Media in Australia, Britain, and the US have negatively portrayed the usage of HRT, claiming that its use exhibits a speaker's insecurities about the statement and undermines effective speaking. Time reports that it hampers job interviews. However, other research has suggested HRT can be an effective way for speakers to establish common ground, that this often involves breathy voice, and that its meaning is highly situational, derived from a "complex interaction of time, presupposition, and inference." Recent evidence shows that leaders of the peer group are more likely to use HRT in their declaratives than the junior members of the particular peer group. According to University of Pennsylvania phonologist Mark Liberman, George W. Bush began to use HRT extensively in his speeches as his presidency continued. Linguist Robin Lakoff drew attention to the pattern in her book Language and Women's Place, which argued that women were socialized to talk in ways that lacked power, authority, and confidence. Rising intonation on declarative sentences was one of the features Lakoff included in her description of "women's language", a gendered speech style she believed reflected and reproduced its users' subordinate social status.
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