Is Up-Speak Killing Your Credibility?
What is Inflexion (or Up-Speak) in Speech?
Inflexion is when the vocal pitch raises. This naturally occurs in speech and it’s beneficial to retain both the ups and downs in speech because this vocal variety increases engagement levels. Typically, when we ask a question, inflexion occurs at the end of the question, in other words, our pitch raises. This indicates to our conversation partner or audience that we asked a question, and most often, that we require a response. This is perfectly normal and typically happens naturally.
The problem is, sometimes people make a statement with an inflexion, often referred to as up-speak. This makes the statement sound like a question or that the speaker is questioning their own words. When this happens, the speaker can be perceived as not confident, competent or credible.
The Potential Detrimental Effects of Up-Speak
Up-Speak and Selling
When I explain this concept to clients, I usually use the example of stating a fee. Imagine being asked for the cost of an item or service you’re selling. Then stating your fee, with or without an inflexion—this could make or break the sale.
Try saying, "It’s $500", with and without inflexion. Can you hear the difference in sound?
Without an inflexion, you definitively state that the fee is $500. With an inflexion, you’re questioning your words, signalling you’re unsure. In other words, "My fee is questionable, negotiate with me". Can you see the significance of this and the potential influence it may have on the way your words are perceived?
Up-Speak and Job Interviews
Now imagine being interviewed for a job, where, like many other people during job interviews, you’re not feeling confident. As you answer the interviewer’s questions, making statements about your accomplishments and previous experience, you do so with an inflexion. Your claims could be perceived as less credible, in other words, it can look like you’re making things up. At best, you can appear that you lack confidence, which is often a killer of job interview success. If you’re questioning your words, then why should anyone buy into you?
Up-Speak and Public Speaking
Imagine having an important message to tell—something you’re passionate about, or something that could potentially improve people’s lives. You’ve been given the stage, you have a killer speech prepared and you have the perfect audience. Your confidence levels aren’t great, since, like most other people, you fear speaking in public. You find some courage, step forward and deliver your talk with up-speak. It doesn’t take long before your audience has switched off. Why should they listen to your message if you're questioning what you’re saying? Your talk falls flat and you’re message goes nowhere.
Up-Speak in Advertising
Let’s look at this one from the perspective of you as the listener. I’m sure you’ve heard ads on YouTube, the radio, Spotify, etc, where the actor or voice over artist speaks in up-speak? It’s typically those ads that come across as cheesy, cheap and contrived. You know what I mean—right?
For example, Bunnings a hardware giant in Australia, often have their employees speaking in their ads. These are regular folk, not used to cameras, probably not feeling too confident about the task they’ve been given. Up-speak occurs and we as the audience feels it sounds contrived.
What’s worse than that are the ads where the business has outsourced to a shoddy advertising agency or hired a not so good voice artist. We perceive the ad as cheap and nasty and sometimes annoying. Now, look at this from the perspective of the business, which has possibly spent thousands on an ad that we perceive as cheesy and annoying.
Inflexion at the end of a sentence should be reserved for a question, or when we feel uncertain about what we’re saying and we deliberately want to communicate that uncertainty.
Up-speak Increases as Confidence Decreases
Up-speak typically increases when people aren’t confident—and confidence is closely tied to perceptions of competence. Making statements with an inflexion at the end could be killing your credibility.
Part of my husband's role is to provide presentations for his clients. When he rehearses at home, I can detect a change in his speech with the introduction of inflexion at certain points in the presentation. This occurs when he has introduced new content into his presentation, which he isn’t yet familiar with. This signals that he isn’t confident with his words at that point. He’s questioning his own words. It’s a true representation of how he feels. Ordinarily, my husband doesn’t speak with an inflexion, unless he’s asking a question.
Up-Speak as a Habit
Many people use up-speak as part of the way they talk, with some using it constantly. This could have started as a confidence issue which has then turned into a habit, or maybe there’s an underlying lack of confidence or insecurity. If this is you, I suggest working on minimising up-speak over time, as unfortunately, it’s not something that you can quit overnight. Habits are hard to break because they involve unlearning—which is much harder than learning something new. The good news is, even if you do have an underlying confidence issue, you can modify your speech to fake it. Although I do also suggest tackling the cause of the confidence issue.
There are many Australians and Americans who use up-speak as a habit on most of their statements. It’s not part of the Australian or American accent, because many other people don’t do it.
If many people in a nation up-speak, does it become less significant as a negative nonverbal behaviour?
No, because, nonverbal communication is picked up and processed mainly at a subconscious level. We may be so used to hearing up-speak that we don't consciously pay attention to it. But our subconscious still picks it up, signalling an emotional response that triggers doubt. And as multicultural nations, Australians and Americans are constantly communicating with people from other cultures. Cultures that perhaps reserve the inflexion to questions only.
I’ve developed a heightened sensitivity to hearing up-speak and how bad it sounds and I know many other people feel the same. I hear it from both men and women and across generations. At times, I've even heard my own stubborn, Northern English accent slip one in! It seems I'm not immune to it myself, but at least I'm aware of it—as you are now, too.
How to Quit Up-Speak/Inflexion
Now you understand what the inflexion/up-speak is and the negative impact it can have, if you have one, you probably realise it’s a good idea to try to quit it. As I already mentioned, if it’s a habit, then it’s going to be hard and will take some time.
The first step is awareness. Start to become aware of inflexion in other people firs. Whether you’re watching news interviews, listening to adverts or conversing with others, try to detect an inflexion. Once you become attuned to this, it makes it a lot easier to hear it in yourself. As you start to consciously hear in in others and yourself, it will most probably become somewhat annoying, this is when it starts to become easier to quit your habit, because you don’t like the way it sounds. It won’t happen overnight, but stick with it and you can get there.
If you need help, ask someone you can trust to keep pointing it out. This is a good way of speeding up the process.
Prepare for Interviews and Public Speaking
Even if you don’t up-speak as a habit, it’s important to realise that it can still happen and that it’s best to avoid it. If you need to prepare for something important, like public speaking, a job interview or an important meeting, then preparation is key. The more prepared and rehearsed you are, the more confident you can become in the message you’re delivering. Practise saying your statements without an inflexion so that they roll off the tongue when the time comes to deliver your message.
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Thank you,
—Sophie
Get in Touch
If you need more help and guidance with up-speak, or a safe space to become more aware of it and practise conversations get in touch.
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