How Women Speak The Secret To Success

Is the debate about how women speak the secret to success...or just plain sexist?

- Deborah Cicurel

We’ve all seen the Facebook articles pop up on our feed. The ones titled “The One Word Women Should Stop Using in the Office”. They’re so common, we can guess the word without even clicking: “sorry”, “like” or “just”.

If the experts quoted in these articles (including Ellen Petry Leanse, a former Google and Apple executive, who kick started the debate on the pitfalls of saying “just”) are to be believed, these verbal tics make us sound nervous, apologetic and even childlike.

That’s not even mentioning the apparent problems inherent in our very tone of voice, with experts claiming that up talk (also known as Valley speak) and vocal fry (a creaky voice a la the Kardashians) make women sound uncertain or even annoying to listen to.

Now, apparently, we don’t only need to worry about what we wear, how we look and how we ask for a pay rise – we must also pay heed to the minute inflections, tones and words.

But are we really ruining our chances of a promotion by uttering the word “sorry” one too many times?

“There are many perceived stereotypes about the way women speak,” explains Ng Bee Chin, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University.