By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
Let’s say that I’m testifying in trial? And that role has got me a little wary? And hesitant? So, those feelings leak through my non-verbal communication? And I start raising my pitch at the end of every sentence? My statements all start to sound as if they were questions? It is called “rising intonation”? And, over time, it can get pretty irritating? And it can also tell the jury that I’m not very sure about anything that I’m saying?
Yes, I’ve met witnesses who speak like that. The lack of certainty and confidence conveyed through rising intonation can place a question mark over an otherwise effective witness. After all, witnesses ought to come off as at least being clear about what they are saying. But the vocal habit of rising intonation can stand in the way of that. To the ear, when rising intonation is used at the end of a statement rather a question, it downplays assertiveness and certainty. Conversationally, this can be functional — a way of inviting the other person into the discussion by adding a vocal, “… and what do you think?” after a statement. But as a habit in presentations and in testimony, it is not functional because it weakens credibility by sounding tentative and weak. In this post, I’m going to take a look at some of the research on rising intonation — also called “rising inflection,” “high rising terminals,” “uptalk” or even “Valley girl talk.” I’ll also end on a down note by making some suggestions for fixing the problem.
Rising Intonation: Reasons and Results
If you stepped up to a counter at a burger joint and made the statement, “I’d like a hamburger” you might well say it with rising intonation so it sounds more like “I’d like a hamburger?” In that context, it is a statement, but it is functioning more as a question — a way of saying “May I have a hamburger?” You’re sure about what you would like, I presume, but you add that vocal question mark out of habit in order to appear less demanding and more polite.
More broadly, there are other situations where that vocal tactic is used to dial down the assertiveness, and it is generally an implicit reaction to a situation rather than a planned strategy. There are also certainly generational and cultural factors that differentiate the use of rising intonation as well.
The problem is that, in settings outside of the casual and the conversational, rising intonation influences judgments of credibility (Ozuru & Hirst, 2006). The connection between rising intonation and the power of speech first received substantial attention through the work of University of California linguist Robin Lakoff (1973) who argued that women were socialized to speak in ways that lacked power. This occurred, Lakoff observed, through a number of habits including rising intonation known the “Female Register.” Later, however, a comprehensive courtroom study (O’Barr & Atkins, 1980) showed that use of these language features broke not along gendered lines, but along the lines of social power. Focusing on “Powerless Language,” these researchers were able to demonstrate that, whether women or men, speakers who relied on those habits were less likely to be believed.
More recent research has added to our understanding. One study (Lai, 2010) may explain why witnesses on the stand can be prone to rising intonation, suggesting that the habit is reflective of uncertainty and a difficulty integrating new information. Another study (Liberman, 2005) suggests that it varies in response to challenges: President George W. Bush began to use rising intonation more and more frequently in his speeches as his Presidency wore on. With greater complexity and more difficulty, our comfort with certainty might wane, and rising intonation appears as a subtle tell.
Fixing Rising Intonation
Let me suggest a few ways for witnesses to get past the conveyed uncertainty.
1. Get Feedback
The first step is awareness. After pointing out rising intonation, I have never had a witness say, “Oh yeah, I know I do that.” Communicators are generally unaware of the habit until it is pointed out. Witnesses cannot — and certainly should not try — to monitor the habit on the stand either. For that reason, it is critical to engage in practice testimony in advance, and to video record it if possible. Getting advice is one thing, and seeing it for yourself is another.
2. Practice Purposefully
This past week, I worked with one witness to try to address his near-constant use of rising intonation. One response he shared is that he felt like his answers were one long sentence, with the rising intonation used to indicate commas rather than periods. That makes sense, since people are also prone to raise pitch when making a list. One way to fix it is to purposefully focus on speaking in short sentences and avoiding commas. Aside from avoiding the pitch problem, there are many other benefits to that as well (simplicity, pauses, etc.).
3. Address the Cause
For most of us, rising intonation is not an unvarying speech trait but is instead a situational state. So a good question to investigate with a witness is, “What is it about the situation that is creating the hesitation and the uncertainty?” It may be just the unfamiliarity of testimony itself. It may be the difficulty in following counsel’s purpose and chain of thought. Or, it may be a more fundamental problem with the substance of the answers themselves. In any case, the solution is to discuss those issues and to boost practice, which in turn boosts comfort and confidence.
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Other Posts on Nonverbal Delivery:
- Tune Your Witness’s Tone of Voice
- Don’t Be Too Sure About Face Reading Your Jury
- Don’t Worry About the Jury’s Eye Contact (Worry About Your Own)
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Lai, C. (2010, September). What do you mean, you’re uncertain?: the interpretation of cue words and rising intonation in dialogue. In INTERSPEECH(pp. 1413-1416).
Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and Women’s Place. Language in Society 2:1, pp. 45-80.
Mark Liberman, “Uptalk uptick?”. Language Log, 15 December 2005.
O’Barr, W. M., & Atkins, B. K. (1980). Women’s language” or” powerless language. Women and language in literature and society, 93, 110.
Ozuru, Y., & Hirst, W. (2006). Surface features of utterances, credibility judgments, and memory. Memory & cognition, 34(7), 1512-1526.
Photo Credit: Wendy, Flickr Creative Commons