Jane Setter - Your Voice Speaks Volumes: Its Not What You Say, But How You Say It

Have you ever thought about your voice and the way you speak? Really thought about it?

If yourefor examplea singer, a spoken-word performer, have had speech and language therapy, or had an experience which has caused you to use your voice differently, Ill bet you have. But otherwise, unless youve been in a position where someone made some kind of comment about your voice or the way you speak, you may not have thought about it. Even then, you might have just ignored the comment as irrelevant, unimportant, or simply impertinent. But is it?

There is evidence to suggest that the way you speak is just as important now as it ever has been. All sorts of value judgments are made about people on the basis of their voice. The moment you open your mouth and utter that first phraseno matter what you look likeconclusions are drawn; decisions are made. Some of those conclusions and decisions may have an effect on how successful you are in life.

This book is about the way that people speak and how their voice represents them, both how they perceive it to represent them and the perceptions of others. Among other things, it looks at what influences the way our mother tongue sounds when we speak it, how we can classify and describe speech and accent features, whether the speech of people from different genders is similar or different, what people think accent tells us about speakers and the prejudices people have, how your voice can be used to identify you, how people modify the way they speak (or sing) depending on a variety of factors, and how advances in technology mean that individual voices can now be created for people who can no longer use their own.

The way people speak has always fascinated me, from the sound of the voice itself to the spoken words and grammar. This has probably got a lot to do with my father. Where hed picked up his Southern British Standard (SBS) accent, I never knewbut he was certainly going to make sure my spoken English didnt descend too far into the local accent and dialect spoken where I grew up. Oh nothat would never do! And so I became fascinated by how people spoke, helped along by my mothers love of Hollywood musicals, and an introduction to the film My Fair Lady, which basically seemed to tell my fathers story from the point of view of a London flower girl.

I want to be a lady in a flowr shop, says Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaws play, stead of sellin at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they wont take me unless I can talk more genteel.

And what of Henry Higginss (male, English-centric) assertion that An Englishmans way of speaking absolutely classifies him; the moment he talks, he makes another Englishman despise him?

As a nation, the British seem to be much more accepting of regional variation than they used to be in, say, the 1950s. If you listen to BBC news and continuity presenters back then, they sound very upper class, usually having what is referred to as a cut-glass accent, or The Queens English. The official term for the cut-glass accent is Received Pronunciation, or RP, where received means accepted (more on the subject of RP later). Until fairly recently, regional accents would only appear in fiction or drama on the BBC, not news and current affairs.

These days, there is a variety of accents on the air, and not just confined to regional news programmes. One might assume, therefore, that Henry Higginss comment no longer applies in this day and age of social mobility. While I have heard tales that in the past BBC broadcasters had received letters complaining about their (usually very mild) regional accents, this seems to be less common nowadays, unless someone has quite a strong regional accent. Recently, BBC Breakfast presenter Steph McGovern, who hails from Middlesbrough and has a discernible Middlesbrough accent (but otherwise speaks with a Standard English dialect whilst on the air), disclosed that a viewer had sent her money for elocution lessons. Why should a regional accent be important when she has a degree in science and communication policy from University College London, over ten years experience as a financial journalist, is a highly skilled communicator, and was named Young Engineer of the Year? Why should this educated womans voice be the thing that defines her in the opinion of some members of the public? There has also been media speculation about whether Prince Harrys voice played a role in attracting Meghan Markle, whether footballer David Beckham ever had elocution lessons to sound more authoritative as England captain, and some rather unkind comments about actor and presenter Donna Air losing her Geordie accent to sound a little posher to date Kate Middletons brother. Clearly, how you speak still matters to a large number of people, or it simply would not be newsworthy.

In this book, Ill be mainly using the word voice in the non-technical sense, i.e., as a cover term for the way that people produce speech and how that sounds. In technical termsas far as phoneticians and speech therapists are concerned, for examplevoice refers to how lung air causes there to be vibration or friction of various kinds at the vocal folds in the larynx (sometimes known as the voice box), creating sound for humans to modify into speech and language. This sound may have a variety of voice qualities, depending on things like how the speaker feels, what emotions or effects they want to convey, or whether there has been damage to the vocal folds.