http://community.livejournal.com/metapractice/216168.htmlRising Intonation or HRT: Rapport-builder or Rapport-killer?
An example of the impact of nonverbal (tonal) qualities of a message.
Recently I sent a note to some colleagues mentioning that I had noticed that some people—more often women—ended a sentence or a phrase with an upward inflection that usually indicates a question. I asked if anyone had an understanding of this, since I didn’t want to rediscover something that was already understood. I got the wonderful response below from a linguist who asked not to be identified: