"Sexy baby voice" is an

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

speech pattern or

sociolect In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language ( non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group. Sociolects involve both passive acquisi ...

, first described by U.S. media in 2013, in which young women affect the high-pitched voice of

pre-pubescent Preadolescence is a stage of Human development (biology), human development following Child#Developmental_stages_of_childhood, middle childhood and preceding adolescence.New Oxford American Dictionary. 2nd Edition. 2005. Oxford University Press ...

girls. Actress

Lake Bell Lake Siegel Bell (born March 24, 1979) is an American actress, screenwriter and director. She has starred in various television series, including '' Boston Legal'' (2004–2006), ''Surface'' (2005–2006), ''How to Make It in America'' (2010–2 ...

popularized the term with her 2013 film '' In a World...'', and subsequently gave various interviews on the speech pattern.

Features

The speech patterns at issue are described as sounding "like

Minnie Mouse Minnie Mouse is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. As the longtime sweetheart of Mickey Mouse, she is an anthropomorphic mouse with white gloves, a bow, polka-dotted dress, white bloomers, and low-heeled shoes occasionally w ...

on helium", or a "mousy squeak

ith a The Ith () is a ridge in Germany's Central Uplands which is up to 439 m high. It lies about 40 km southwest of Hanover and, at 22 kilometres, is the longest line of crags in North Germany. Geography Location The Ith is immediatel ...

handful of

gravel Gravel is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally throughout the world as a result of sedimentary and erosive geologic processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gravel is classifi ...

tossed across the very top of the register". Actress

described the style as an amalgamation of " valley-girl voice" (characterized by " upspeak" and

vocal fry The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...

) and high pitch.

Controversy

"Sexy baby voice" is controversial in discussions about

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...

and related issues. Bell and others have argued that the use of "sexy baby voice" demeans the speaker, who appears as a "submissive 12-year-old trying to be a sex object", or that its use in film and television exploits contemporary culture's "fetish for adult sexuality wrapped in adolescent packages". Others questioned the purpose of critiquing the speech pattern, asserting that "picking at the vocal quirks of your own gender is just as much of a nuisance as harping on the bodies that belong to them".

Phonetician Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

Mark Liberman Mark Yoffe Liberman is an American linguist. He has a dual appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, as Trustee Professor of Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics, and as a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Scienc ...

wrote that it was not clear that the discussion about "sexy baby voice" referred to a specific speech pattern rather than just "a long list of things about various female-associated vocal features that people don't like". He also noted previous discussions about similar female speech patterns in earlier decades, such as a controversy about "

uptalk The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as 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-or-no questions ...

" in the 1990s.

References

{{reflist Forms of English Sociolinguistics Feminism and society Phonetics

Features

Controversy

See also

References