Maryland alums respond to stigmatization of vocal fry

Riposte by Matt Winn and Alayo Tripp to sexist critique of vocal fry.

Linguistics alum Alayo Tripp *19 joins Audiology alum Matthew Winn *11 and Minnesota colleague Benjamin Munson in responding to a recent proposal, published in Perspectives of the [American Speech-Language-Hearing Association] Special Interest Groups, that "young women [should] actively suppress their use of vocal fry [...] to make themselves more marketable to employers who discriminate on the basis of vocal fry use." Their riposte – linked here – "[reviews] research on vocal fry, social evaluation, and linguistic discrimination, [and] show[s] how this recommendation is fundamentally flawed and [...] perpetuates sexist tropes about language use." "Rather than recommending that victims of sexism change their behavior to suit the biased views of others," it concludes, "we should use our energy to eradicate the underlying sexism." Both Tripp and Winn had Bill Idsardi as an advisor in their dissertation work at UMD. Alayo's dissertation, "An affiliative model of early lexical learning," co-chaired by Bill and Naomi, is here.