• Mood: curious

A quick linguistic/speech pathology question.

Listening to assorted public radio podcasts while tagging posts in npr_junkie, I came across one especially irritating verbal trait in a past installment of North Texas News and Commentary (podcast info).

In the story "Schools use new techniques to keep poor and minority students in gifted education" (transcript / MP3), the reporter has sort of an edge of mouth/hissing thing going on and I can't quite put my finger on what it's called or how a speaker could compensate for that sound. Any ideas?