Editing High rising terminal (section)

==Implications for gender==

Because HRT has been popularized as "Valley Girl Speak", it has acquired an almost exclusively feminine gender connotation. Studies confirm that more women use HRT than men.<ref name="NYblogs">{{cite web 
| url=http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/overturning-the-myth-of-valley-girl-speak/? 
| title=Overturning the Myth of Valley Girl Speak | work=The New York Times 
| first=Jan |last=Hoffman 
| date=December 23, 2013 | access-date=August 15, 2016 }}</ref> Linguist [[Thomas J. Linneman]] contends, "The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use HRT; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk."<ref name=NYblogs/> Though women appear to use HRT more often than men, the differences in frequency are not significant enough to brand HRT as an exclusively female speech pattern. Susan Miller, a vocal coach in Washington, D.C., insists that she receives both male and female clients with equal frequency—not because either gender is concerned that they sound too feminine, but that they sound too young.<ref>{{cite magazine | url=https://time.com/2820087/3-speech-habits-that-are-worse-than-vocal-fry-in-job-interviews/ | title=3 Speech Habits That Are Worse Than Vocal Fry in Job Interviews | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | date=June 4, 2014 | access-date=March 24, 2016 | author=Rhodan, Maya}}</ref>

Findings have thus been inconclusive regarding HRT as a gendered speech pattern, though the (partial) evidence that HRT is more common among women is consistent with the third principle of the [[gender paradox]] identified by sociolinguist [[William Labov]], namely that "in linguistic change from below, women use higher frequencies of innovative forms more than men do." Viewing HRT as "change from below" also explains why it appears to be more common among young speakers.

There appears to be merit to the claim that gendered connotations of HRT give rise to difficulties for women in particular. [[Anne Charity Hudley]], a linguist at [[Stanford University]], suggests, "When certain linguistic traits are tied to women . . . they often will be assigned a negative attribute without any actual evidence."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-24/upspeaks-use-by-smart-men-and-women-and-what-it-means | title=What Does How You Talk Have to Do With How You Get Ahead? | work=Bloomberg.com | date=April 24, 2014 | access-date=March 24, 2016 | author=Winter, Caroline |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150216083104/http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-24/upspeaks-use-by-smart-men-and-women-and-what-it-means|archive-date=February 16, 2015}}</ref> Negative associations with the speech pattern, in combination with gendered expectations, have contributed to an implication that for female speakers to be viewed as authoritative, they ought to sound more like men than women. These implications are perpetuated by various media, including the coverage of politics.

U.S. Senator [[Kirsten Gillibrand]], for example, has voiced her concern that traditionally feminine speech patterns do not allow a female speaker to be taken seriously. "To meet those standards," she says, "you have to speak less like a young girl and more like a young, aspiring professional . . . it's a choice every young woman is going to have to make about how she wants to be and how she wants to be received."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/a-female-senator-explains-why-uptalk-is-part-of-womens-nature/283107/ | title=A Female Senator Explains Why Uptalk Is Part of Women's 'Nature' | work=The Atlantic | date=January 16, 2014 | access-date=March 24, 2016 | author=Green, Emma}}</ref> Lydia Dallet of ''Business Insider'' affirms this concern.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.businessinsider.com/how-uptalk-could-cost-you-a-promotion-2014-1 |work=Business Insider |title=This Communication Quirk Could Cost You a Promotion | access-date=August 14, 2016 |last=Dallet |first=Lydia|date=January 25, 2014}}</ref>