Free Ebook The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent, by Anne Karpf
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The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent, by Anne Karpf
Free Ebook The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent, by Anne Karpf
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Why has the female voice deepened over the last fifty years? Who talks more, men or women? How can a baby in the womb distinguish between different voices? The human voice is the personal and social glue that binds us, and the most important sound in our lives. The moment we open our mouth we leak information about our biological, psychological and social status. Babies use it to establish emotional ties and acquire language, adults to decode mood and meaning in intimate and professional relationships. Far from being rendered redundant by modern technology, the human voice has enormous and enduring significance.
- Sales Rank: #1946066 in Books
- Published on: 2007-07-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x .55" w x 5.08" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
From Publishers Weekly
This lively and intelligent guide reveals how powerfully and pervasively the human voice shapes our everyday world. Karpf, a British sociologist and columnist for the Guardian, engages with current research while interspersing intimate, reflective interviews with friends and relatives. In linguistics, the medium of voice traditionally receives short shrift, as Karpf points out: "We raid speech for its semantic meaning, and then discard the voice like detritus, leftovers." Karpf begins by demystifying the physical components of voice. She explores babies' capacity to recognize voices and their innate ability to focus on the rhythm of speech. Karpf then explores the psychological dimensions of voice, including how our voices change in different circumstances: when talking to oneself, say, or to pets. Tackling gender, Karpf speculates on why women's voices have deepened significantly over the last 50 years (to sound more trustworthy, i.e., masculine). Looking at voices in a global context, she notices that volume means different things in different cultures: "Arabs sound loud to Americans, and Americans not loud enough and insincere to Arabs." As clear and accessible as a good radio series, Karpf's fluent study provides an excellent introduction to an often-overlooked subject. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—Karpf, a sociologist and BBC journalist, argues that although much attention has been paid lately to speaking styles, surprisingly little focus has been on the voice itself. Here, in lively prose, she goes a long way toward filling that gap. The author discusses the mechanics of the sounds people make; what distinguishes human sounds from those of other animals; the effects of emotions on voices; cultural and gender differences; and how technology has been changing the ways we express ourselves. Hot current topics such as voiceprinting and the importance of voice in the workplace are addressed, as are the social effects of cell phones and musical experimentation on the new "audio-aware generation." Karpf shines a clear light on Hitler's speaking style and shows how crowds were manipulated by it. Through analyses of Tony Blair and the American politicians Reagan, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and both Presidents Bush, she challenges readers to understand what they are really hearing in the voices of today's politicians-where, she asserts, the voice is no longer an instrument for argument, but for seduction. This is fine popular-science writing, and it will leave teens with a fresh and useful perspective on an important aspect of life that might have been, until now, misunderstood or unquestioned.—Christine C. Menefee, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Scientific American
Despite the onslaught of text messaging, e-mail and emoticons, we still enjoy speaking to one another, if only over our cell phones. Casting the voice as an unsung hero, British author and radio broadcaster Anne Karpf challenges the notion that the visual has superseded the aural and oral. She argues that "there are three reasons for exploring the voice": it is distinctly human, vital and just plain fascinating. Karpf begins her case by pointing out that unlike other primates for whom certain vocalizations are innate, we gradually develop our voices by learning. Humans can produce 325 sounds with vowel and pitch combinations alone. To convince us that the voice is as vital as the written word, Karpf demonstrates that words are only one color on a verbal palette that includes pitch, tone, timbre, volume and emphasis. Examples of sentences whose meanings are voice-dependent provoked this reviewer to read aloud and to think twice about the different tones with which my e-mail compositions could be read before clicking my "send" icon. Commenting on the purely physical attributes of speech, Karpf reminds us that the voice carries as much personal data as a fi ngerprint; by simply analyzing a recording, future technologies may reveal our location, gender and feelings. Whether we welcome or dread "voiceprint" technology, our speech is bound to our identities and therefore to our survival. The enthusiastic author presents a pile of other fascinating facts documented in 80 pages of references. Somewhat repetitive, the book delivers catchy self-contained sections to ensure that the main points do not escape those with byte-size attention spans. Rewards await more patient readers, as Karpf explores politics and society from an acoustical angle. Her conversational and distinctly feminist style dominates sections on the philosophy behind baby talk, reasons for cultural dissonance, how voice and gender shape one another, and public speaking. Readers will develop the ability to listen rather than simply hear.
Brie Finegold
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Couldn't get into the book
By Meredith Gray
I could not preview the book digitally before buying it. I read 1 chapter and couldn't get interested.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Get to Know Your Instrument
By Rob Hardy
Animals of all different kinds busy themselves with making noises in order to feed or mate or protect themselves. Humans are no different, but have taken the use of their anatomical noisemaking devices to extreme utility. Of course, this is tied to our use of language, and language is full of puzzling aspects, but so is the human voice when considered as an instrument or tool rather than just an auditory word delivery system. In _The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are_ (Bloomsbury), Anne Karpf looks at the importance of the voice to human society, and the paradoxical way that we take it for granted. Karpf skillfully takes us through many surprising aspects of how we use our voices, and cites many curious studies that have used clever tricks to make the voice give up its secrets; this isn't an academic treatise, but there are eighty pages of footnotes with sources from Aristotle to The Simpsons. She has done fifty interviews with people about their own voices, what they think about other people's voices, and how much information a voice can give them. It's a perfect subject for a book: everyone has a voice, everyone has intimate vocal connections to others, and everyone has more to learn about how it all works.
She begins with an examination of how our anatomy works to make the voice. Among the complexities of our vocal systems is that all the components have other functions rather than producing voices, functions that are vital to life while voice-making is a mere option. Teeth and tongue modify the voice, for instance, but they are really there (as they are in voiceless animals) for purposes of eating. We are programmed to recognize voices even before we are born. A baby within the uterus can react to some sounds as early as fourteen weeks on, and quickly becomes attuned to the mother's voice, which some studies show has a calming effect, slowing the fetal heart rate. After birth, a baby reliably reacts more to the voice of the mother than to anyone else. It is a familiar phenomenon that if one baby in a group starts crying, other babies will be likely to start to do so themselves, indicating that even infants have some programmed sympathy for the distress of others. It is fascinating, though, that a baby tends not to start crying if played a recording of its own cries, indicating a knowledge at birth of the difference between me and not-me. In the sixties, the word "voiceprint" was coined, and it was thought that each individual voice might be visually represented with the fidelity of fingerprints. Forensic identification of speakers, however, has required subjective opinions of experts in ways that fingerprints do not, and often such evidence has yet to be declared admissible in state courts. Part of the problem is that age, mood, and situation change our voices in ways that vary voiceprints out of identifiability.
Karpf has just mentioned key findings of many studies, not all of which are conclusive. She does express her doubts on studies such as those of professor Albert Mehrabian who supposedly found that 7% of the information conveyed by a voice consists of words and their meaning, while the rest of the communication comes from vocal and facial expression. Karpf generally campaigns, however, that the voice is more important than we have thought, and she is convincing. Her enthusiasm for her subject is readily apparent; she is eager to make sure the voice gets the recognition it deserves, and all who read this book will gain an increase of appreciation for their own voices and what voices can do for us. Karpf takes note, for instance, that some large firms are promoting "e-mail free Friday", whereby for one day a week e-mail will be ditched, with the aim that employees will begin talking and listening to each other.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
"Talkativeness is a mouth's fart" . . .
By Found Highways
. . . is a Japanese proverb that British sociologist Anne Karpf uses, along with scientific data, to show how one culture values silence (especially for female speakers, or non-speakers, as the case may be).
But just across the Bering Sea, Karpf found that Alaska Native Americans who were convicted of crimes got longer jail sentences when they spoke slower and paused more when speaking to non-Native police and judges (vocal behavior that would have been interpreted as respectful in Japan).
The voice, like so much else, is partly determined by nature and partly determined by culture. Karpf also shows many other ways that My Voice is determined by Your Ear.
So much in this entertaining book is pertinent today. Just yesterday I saw a headline in The Drudge Report that said WOMEN TALK 3 TIMES MORE THAN MEN. (Drudge does like his caps.) But Karpf quotes evidence rather than impression proving MEN TALK MORE!!! AND THEY INTERRUPT!!!!!
The most interesting section of the book for me was on "The Public Voice." Here Karpf eviscerates British and American politicians. Karpf is fair, analyzing politicians of the the left and right. I'm not fair, so I'll just quote Karpf on Tony Blair, whose voice has been "emotionally incontinent" ever since Diana died. And Blair has also puposefully stuck an "Estuary-style mini glottal stop" in his speech to add "blokeishness" to his voice.
But Blair's political voice is just one example of the "new intimacy" evinced by politicians in Britain and the U.S. They want to "act sincere," which is, as Karpf points out, a contradiction in terms. That reminds me of the old joke (was it Samuel Goldwyn who said it?): "The most important thing is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made."
The Human Voice is full of fascinating facts. For instance, opera singers make THEMSELVES deaf from listening to the vibrations of their own voices in their skulls. (Margaret Thatcher apparently ruined her voice by shouting down opponents in parliament. Whether she listened to what she was saying is an interesting question.)
There have been several great books on linguistics lately (by scientists who write well, not language scolds like Lynne Truss). There's David Crystal's new book How Language Works (the section on phonetics is good to read before or in conjunction with Anne Karpf's The Human Voice), and also Australian linguist Kate Burridge's Blooming English and Weeds in the Garden of Words.
But I'm definitely going to read anything else by Anne Karpf.
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