With respect to uptalk, Cruttenden (1997: 129) pointed out that just ‘a small amount … can mark out the speaker very noticeably for the listener’. In this chapter we consider studies that have focused on the perception of uptalk, and on how uptalk is noticed and interpreted by the listener. With regard to the interpretation of uptalk, House (2006: 1555) noted that the high boundary tone (H%) is tantamount to an instruction to the listener to interpret the phrase ending in that tone as part of a larger structure. As a consequence, that phrase remains ‘open-ended’, indicating a wider context, and so the listener needs to work out what that wider context could be and what, therefore, the speaker's intentions were in using that particular intonation contour. Using the framework of Relevance Theory, House proposes that the listener will select the first interpretation that is sufficiently relevant. Since relevance depends on the context of use, including the prior experience of the listener, uptalk may be ambiguous, interpreted by some listeners as conveying the affective functions of high pitch, such as deference or powerlessness, by others as having a linguistic function such as the indication of a question, and by a further group as being used interactively and collaboratively to maintain involvement of both parties to the conversation.

Three aspects of the perception of uptalk will be considered in the chapter. The first involves the question of whether listeners can distinguish between statement rises (uptalk) and question rises. We have seen in Chapter 2 that a number of studies have found differences between the two types of sentences in some of the phonetic parameters of the rises. The second aspect concerns the interpretation of and attitudes towards uptalk. The third considers other speaker- and listener-related factors that have been claimed to influence the interpretation of uptalk.

Perception of high-rise forms

Anecdotally, Benton (1966: 71–72), in his study of the New Zealand English of Māori school children, notes that ‘confusions related to question intonations were frequently encountered’. Specifically, utterances with declarative word order intended by him as questions were interpreted by the children as statements. Benton presents He'll be coming tomorrow? as an example of ambiguity in the perception of high-rise forms. This utterance was intended as a question but interpreted as a statement.