'Jeopardy!' contestant Laura Ashby of Marietta, Georgia, has more than intrigued viewers across America in recent days, and it has nothing to do with her obvious intelligence, as she has pocketed $36,802 so far on her winning streak in on the show. Ashby has been tagged by many 'Jeopardy!' viewers as the most annoying champ ever.
She is an associate with the Litigation Department of Miller & Martin's Atlanta office. Her practice concentrates on business, intellectual property, and tort litigation. She also provides counseling to clients regarding intellectual property matters.
So why is she dubbed as the MOST ANNOYING 'JEOPARDY' CHAMP EVER? Many found that elongated and upward inflection of the last syllable of each word in her responses irritating, and many took to twitter to vent out their emotions.
One twitter user quipped "I hope someone beats #JeopardyLaura tonight. I am irrationally irritated with her."
The culprit to the public's ire is what we refer to as 'Uptalk.' Uptalk is using upward inflection at the end of a declarative statement which makes a word or a phrase sound like a question when it's not.
So why does it annoy or irritate people so much? Perhaps it promotes uncertainty rather than confidence. Everything sounds like it is in a question form and it suggests that you are willing to back down or to change your opinion on a certain object if it doesn't get the approval of the masses.
The Smithsonian found out, after they analyzed several hours of 'Jeopardy!' though, that uptalk was used by female contestants in uncertain situations "a whopping 76% of the time" while male contestants "uptalk frequency more than doubled if they were correcting a woman's answer."
Majority of the people will got annoyed or irritated in hearing Ashby uptalking as she answered each question on 'Jeopardy!', but uptalk actually happens normally on the show for both men and women since you have to state your answer in a question form. Outside of 'Jeopeardy!' uptalking has even become ever present and people donot really notice it until you point it out to them.
