One increasingly noticeable feature of the language of younger female speakers in contemporary American English is the lengthening of clause-final syllables, both open (ending in a vowel) and closed (ending in a consonant), in unstressed syllables. Thus words like America and negotiation, when occurring at the end of clauses, routinely have hyper-long unstressed vowels in the speech of women but not of men, most noticeably when the syllable is followed by a pause.

One possible explanation is compensatory. Lengthened syllables (syllables of greater duration) are always marked vis-à-vis their normal counterparts, and this marked character can serve the function of emphasis sub rosa. Speech in which this occurs can be interpreted as an attempt covertly to convey assertory meaning where overt assertion would undercut the apotropaic flag under which women’s speech––in American English, but not only––generally flies.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO