Are your singers emphasizing words like they’re the TikTok text-to-speech voice?
The ubiquitous text-to-speech voice from TikTok is immediately recognizable once you’ve heard it. And part of that is for the stilted, easily parodied diction.
She! kind! of! emphasizes! every! word! excitedly!
It’s clear that sometimes choirs can forget to make effective syllabic stress to tell the story they want to tell. And when they do, they end up doing what the TikTok text-to-speech voice does: repeated emphasis.
Hopefully this is a reference that makes sense to your singers and can help you have a fun, open dialogue about syllabic stress.