Funnily enough, the upward inflexion and sing-song is most prevalent among British broadcast reporters, particularly on the BBC. It really is just a lazy habit and a consequence of "reading" a script rather than telling the story.

The chief malaise among Australian broadcast journalists is the 'Jana Wendt' style of inserting pauses haphazardly and stressing the wrong words. How often do you hear, "Police say 20,000 PEOPLE turned out for the demonstration" (as opposed to 20,000 squirrels?) or "According to a spokesman for Prime Minister Kevin RUDD" (as opposed to PM Kevin Smith?)

This tendency I think springs from poor breathing. Reporters don't break their scripts up into logical chunks. Instead, they pause when they run out of breath and routinely emphasise the last word before they breathe again irrespective of its significance.

They used to teach this stuff in my day.

There is a lot of accepted wisdom about how to speak - whether it's talking or reading. I've spent much of my life studying and teaching in this area - and now I'm not sure about this wisdom. Its rules for emphasis and stress and intonation, which this article covers, may not be the deepest truth. My conclusion is that when someone talks, and presents ideas, people believe what suits them, regardless of the delivery style. If the content we are hearing (despite 'wrong' intonation) suits our belief systems, we agree. If the content is delivered in Laurence Olivier style, and it clashes with out belief systems, we reject it.
The persuasive person is not the good speaker according to Toastmaster-type rules, but the one who puts ideas across which combine to tap into things we already believe. This happens despite the mannerisms.

Analyst

I have long thought that the rising inflection used by youth so often actually does indicate doubt. So does the use of 'grunt' words like huh, em, err etc.
Many young people are extremely cautious, not wanting to express anything outside 'the pack'. So, when making statements they might sub-consciously make it sound like a question, hoping for support and agreement from their peer group or whomever they are addressing. Or, they may not want to appear too bright as that might also differentiate them from their peers. Unfortunately this leads to the desirability of the dense.
I've been through the annoyance phase, now I just consider it somewhat sad.

We seem to talk about Australian ‘upspeak’ (as I’ve heard British people refer to our tendency to frame every statement as a question?) as if it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. But it’s actually been around a very long time.

I recall it well as a child in the 70s, especially among young girls, and it seems to have broadened out to the wider population in the decades since.

Ironically, young males have taken it on in droves, while young women seem to be moving away from it, in favour of that ghastly Valley Girl nasal whine that goes on and on about, like … exCUSE me? … and… hel-LO-oo! … I’m so TOTALLY not as shallow and bored with everything, even though I really… like … try so TOTALLY hard to sound as if I … like … AM.

Agree with the article and the comments but there's a couple of interrogatives abroad that are worthy of mention. I have been listening to some lectures by volunteers from various community organisations of late and the number of interspersions of 'OK' (rising inflection) and 'You know' peppering the lecture is really becoming annoying. Whether these people are desperately seeking re-assurance that they have in fact conveyed information or are merely unable to think in more than two sentence sound bites, the effect is most distracting. As Eliza's nemesis 'enry 'iggings bemoans 'oh why can't the English teach their children how to speak?'

Great article, which plucks a lot of strings.

Please tackle the "myself" problem. The misuse of this word is really annoying. It demonstrates that the user does not understand grammar (as you described it) or sentence construction, or even the relatively newer Subject, Object, Verb, Adjective/Adverb (SOVA) standard, otherwise they would understand how wrong is the use of "myself" in a shared Subject, e.g. "My wife and myself love reading".

It is simple, as you suggested. A bit of practice of the breakdown of "I love reading" and "My wife loves reading" easily becomes "My wife and I love reading". Who would say "Myself loves reading"?

This has to be corrected soon or it will become too vulgare and pass into common usage, and therefore be "correct".