Men use "vocal fry" more often than women, contrary to the stereotype – study
Kyiv • UNN
Men use vocal fry more frequently than women, despite the myths. The creaky voice in girls is perceived more acutely only due to social bias.
Men use the so-called "vocal fry" more often than women, although in the public consciousness this linguistic phenomenon is usually associated specifically with young women. These findings contradict the widespread stereotype and indicate the presence of social bias in the perception of voice. This is reported by Ars Technica, according to UNN.
Details
Vocal fry, or the so-called "creaky voice," is a characteristic lowering of the pitch, usually at the end of sentences, which is particularly associated with the speech patterns of young women. Britney Spears is considered a classic example of this phenomenon, as she notably used it in her 1998 hit "Hit Me Baby (One More Time)," though she is far from the only one.
But what if this popular gender stereotype is wrong? Jeanne Brown, a PhD student at McGill University, found that vocal fry actually occurs more frequently in men than in women. She presented the results of her study at the Acoustical Society of America conference in Philadelphia. According to Brown, people simply perceive it as more noticeable in young women.
Vocal fry is the lowest of human vocal registers. Others include modal, falsetto, and whistle registers. It occurs when the vocal cords relax, causing the vibration to become irregular, and a characteristic crackling or rattling is heard as air escapes. Vocal fry is characterized by very low fundamental frequencies—around 70 Hz. For comparison, the lower limit of human hearing is 20 Hz.
Ten years ago, an experiment by John Nix, a professor of voice at the University of Texas, was reported, concluding that singers like Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga use vocal fry in pop music to enhance emotionality.
Unamplified styles, such as classical music, usually hide effort and convey emotion more subtly. Amplified styles, such as popular music, on the contrary, showcase effort as something authentic, intimate, raw, exciting, and emotional. Fry can be one way to convey such emotions,
At the same time, vocal fry is used not only by women. It has been used by Justin Bieber, Tim Storms (who holds the world record for the lowest note produced by a human), and gospel bass singers like Mike Holcomb.
The prevalence of vocal fry in spoken language began to be actively discussed in the 2010s after a study showed that women in California used it significantly more often than men. Another 2014 study reached similar conclusions: women used fry four times more often. Such observations were also recorded in Oregon and the US Midwest.
Another study showed that women who use vocal fry in job interviews are perceived worse than men with the same speech manner. For example, This American Life host Ira Glass said that he often uses fry in podcasts and has never received complaints, whereas negative letters regularly arrived regarding the female voices of his colleagues.
Despite criticism of the methodology of such studies, this opinion has taken root in society.
Linguists called this an example of linguistic discrimination, where criticism of young women's voices is used as an indirect form of discrimination against this group,
She decided to conduct her own experiment to test whether a strong gender bias regarding vocal fry truly exists.
Brown collected speech samples from 49 Canadians from open sources and analyzed them for acoustic signs of vocal fry: low or irregular pitch, spectral tilt, and harmonics-to-noise ratio.
Creaky voice is more associated with low-frequency noise, while, for example, breathiness is associated with high-frequency noise,
The results were unexpected: men used vocal fry more often than women, and its use even increased with age.
Then Brown conducted another experiment. She recorded her own voice with vocal fry and then modified the recordings so that the degree of fry varied while the speaker's gender remained ambiguous. After that, she invited 40 participants who were trained to correctly identify creaky voice.
Participants listened to short recordings, each accompanied by an image of a man or a woman, and then rated the level of vocal fry.
Brown discovered a so-called reverse acoustic bias: the main marker for identifying vocal fry was a low voice, not gender.
This shows that the popular narrative reflects sociocultural bias more than reality. Therefore, the question "Why do women use fry so often?" should be replaced with "Why do we perceive and evaluate this voice in this way?",
In her opinion, it's not just about the voice itself. It may be related to the perception of high and low tones, as well as other linguistic features that society stigmatizes.
The conflict between our findings and everyday perception, where women are constantly considered "creakier," indicates that this bias is real but socially constructed, rather than based on how women actually sound,
She also added: "When women are advised to avoid vocal fry for the sake of their careers or social perception, the responsibility is shifted to the speakers instead of addressing the listeners' biases. And this causes real harm."
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