‘Changing Voices’ by Anne Karpf
An extract from her book The Human Voice (2006) Karpf explores the power of voice, it's power, gender, and politics.
In his ground-breaking 1959 book, ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life', the sociologist Erving Goffman argued that social life was like a theatrical performance in which the individual "guides and controls the impression...[others] form of him...by expressing himself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan". [1] Goffman's theory, radical and in many ways shocking when first published, is today not only unremarkable but might almost stand as a ‘to do' list for self-improvers. Indeed, the failure to transform yourself now counts as a dereliction of occupational duty. Professional culture today has no concept of intrinsic self - it's all appearance and mirage, refraction upon refraction, in which the voice plays a crucial role. In post-modern cultures, authenticity as a credo is pretty well discredited - the voice is a fabulous creator of simulacra, which is all that counts.
The voice is now seen as a critical component in professional success. Voice-training companies call themselves ‘The Winning Voice'[2] or the Voice of Influence ("success is just as much about how you sound as about how you look"). Books targeted at business executives bear titles like ‘The Leader's Voice',[3] or promise to teach you to use your voice to deliver a sales pitch that's guaranteed to sell. [4] According to ‘Presenting to Win',[5] 63% of company directors believed that presentation skills were more important for career success than intelligence or financial aptitude. Staff these days are expected to do whatever's required in order to create a good impression, whether this means accent reduction (big in the United States[6]), or a ‘voice lift'. Flab doesn't only affect the stomach but the stomach too. Once you've been Botoxed, tummy tucked and had liposuction, you don't want an ageing voice to let you down: $15,000 will buy you rejuvenating vocal implants - cosmetic or vanity surgery for the voice.[7]
According to the New York Times, a sonorous voice has now been added to the checklist of perfection. Whereas 15 years ago, an American speech pathologist recalls, he rarely had ordinary people who simply didn't like the sound of their voice as patients, today they constitute one-third of his clients. Having a voice coach is now no more remarkable than having a personal trainer.[8]
Ironically, all the emphasis on changing the voice to produce the perfect presentation, or sway a judge, or sell more products, has left listeners with a problem in judging what's authentic, so necessitating the creation of yet another set of primers and guides - this time explaining how to decode other people's voices and distinguish the genuine voice from the phoney one. Books with titles like ‘Never Be Lied To Again',[9] ‘I Know What You're Thinking',[10] and ‘Reading People',[11] that require us to interpret other people's vocal clues and hear between the lines, to become in effect one-person spectrographs, are the direct result of all the vocal makeovers encouraged by their predecessors. It can't be accidental that the field of deception studies has grown so much - there must be more deception about to study.
[1] Erving Goffman, ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life', Preface,p.15 (London: Pelican Books, 1971)
[2] http://www.thewinningvoice.com/
[3] Boyd Clarke, ‘The Leader's Voice' (Select Books, 2002)
[4] Rene Grant-Williams, ‘Voice Power: Using Your Voice to Captivate, Persuade, and Command Attention' (New York: Amacom American Management Association, 2002)
[5] Khalid Aziz, ‘Presenting to Win' (London: Oak Tree Press, 2000)
[6] See Rosanna Lippi-Green's coruscating attack on these in her perceptive analysis, ‘English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States' (London: Routledge, 1997)
[7] See ‘Add a ‘voice lift' to your tummy tuck', 19.04.04, http://www.cnn.com/; Toby Moore, ‘Tune In, Stay Young', The Times, 21.04.04; Claire Coleman, ‘Voice Lift', Daily Mail, 3.10.05
[8] Peter Jaret, ‘My Voice Has Got to Go', New York Times, 21.7.05
[9] David J. Lieberman, ‘Never Be Lied To Again' (New York: St Martin's Press, 1998)
[10] Lillian Glass, ‘'I Know What You're Thinking' (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley, 2002)
[11] Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, ‘Reading people' (London: Vermillion, 1999)
From Anne Karpf, ‘The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent', London: Bloomsbury, 2006