Warning: upspeak can wreck your career

A few weeks ago, I accompanied my daughter to an Open Day at Roehampton College, where she is hoping to start a teacher training course in September. I enjoyed it — and was impressed by the broad mix of motivated young men and women who, if all goes well, will soon be teaching the next generation of primary school children.

Towards the end of the afternoon, the co-ordinator said she wanted to offer a few tips about the interview process that would begin once all the applications have been submitted. It turned out she had only one main tip: avoid upspeak.

She stressed the point vigorously. Indeed, her message for twentysomethings like my daughter seemed to be that it’s perfectly acceptable to turn up in torn trousers with safety pins through their noses and carrying cans of extra-strength lager but they must at all costs dispense with what officially is called the high rising terminal (HRT), otherwise known as that modern plague that does its best to kill off the spoken word by turning every statement into a question and ending every sentence with a rising inflection? Just like that, actually.

Of course, it’s tempting to assume that upspeak is a condition uniquely affecting young people, a phase that will soon pass — like acne or putting up posters of One Direction. In fact, it’s far more serious than that.

Tune into the Today programme and most mornings you’ll hear adult interviewees answering questions with statements packaged as questions. Junior civil servants, council officials and health workers seem particularly susceptible. What’s more, upspeak seems impervious to background, social mobility, money.

Just as frightening is the ever-increasing predilection of grown-ups to break up sentences with redundant fillers such as ‘like,’ ‘whatever’ and that old favourite ‘you know’.