A raised vowel is a vowel sound in which the body of the tongue is raised upward and backward toward the dorsum (soft palate). The most raised cardinal vowels are ; also quite raised are , and .
Raised vowels and retracted vowels constitute the traditional, but articulatorily inaccurate, category of back vowels; they may also overlap many of the central vowels.
References
Scott Moisik, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, & John H. Esling (2012) "The Epilaryngeal Articulator: A New Conceptual Tool for Understanding Lingual-Laryngeal Contrasts"