Women Speaking

Something I have noticed about this region of the country... or at least about this school, because that is where I spend most waking moments: the women (or should I say, the girls) have a particular way of speaking.

Now, people in different regions of the country have different ways of talking, this I know. Having just moved from Louisiana, I tend to miss their language quirks very much. What I have been noticing among the undergraduate girls at SU is not so much a quirk, so to speak, but a pervasive and unsettling quality in their speech.

It is this nasally, upspeaky kind of talk. I thought it was isolated to the sorority girls with the black leggings and uggs boots (quite the fashion here in upstate New York this season), but it seems much  more widespread; this dialect contains a note of condescension that I have been unaccustomed to hearing for the past three years. It really is kind of nauseating, but I guess they sound normal to themselves and to each other? I suppose I have to take into consideration the economical composition of the students I have been hearing this semester - Syracuse University ain't exactly cheap.  

It's weird to me, though. Many of these girls sound like the stereotypical "valley girl" we've seen portrayed over the years. Their tones are as sharp as the words they use and the attitudes behind them. There is definitely a sense of entitlement here in the north that is seemingly absent in the south... how's that for some binary drawing. But it's true. Having grown up in the north, I distinctly felt its absence in the speech and conversations I had with people in Louisiana and in other southern states we visited. Here, people are edgier, more clipped, less gentle - I guess that all goes part and parcel with that faster pace of life us yankees value so much.