Public Speaking I Teacher: Mr. Smith Room # E-409 Unit 2 VOICE Public Speaking I Teacher: Mr. Smith Room # E-409

Objectives Identify the four steps in the process of voice production. Explain how volume, intensity, and emphasis improve vocal effectiveness. Explain how rate, pause, and framing improve vocal effectiveness. Explain how pitch and inflection improve vocal effectiveness. Define articulation. List guidelines for using the microphone.

Warm-up Name a fixed articulator.

Key Terms Articulation (enunciation) Emphasis Framing Inflection Intensity Pause Pitch Respiration Resonance Speech rate Vibration Volume

Voice Production Speaking begins with respiration, vibration, resonation, and articulation.

Respiration Voice production requires air pressure that comes from the diaphragm—the same large band of muscle, just below the rib cage, that enables you to breathe. When the diaphragm expands, the chest cavity is enlarged, creating a sort of vacuum. Air rushes into the nose and throat and on to the lungs until air pressure in the lungs equal the air pressure outside the body. Another name for this process is respiration.

When you control the diaphragms during speech, you release air gradually. The quantity of air exhaled helps determine both the legend of a phrase or sentence and the loudness of your voice. Since voice production begins with respiration, breath control is important to good vocal control.

Vibration By itself, rushing air makes little sound. Listen to yourself whisper. This is the sound of your voice if you don’t use your vocal cords (the folds contained in your larynx), or your voice box. Expelled air must pass over the vocal cords to produce loud sounds. Sound production is the stage of voice production called vibration.

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Resonation Like a vibrating rubber band, your vocal cords would sound flat and lifeless without resonation, amplification and enrichment of the voice. The parts of your body responsible for this stage of the process—resonators—allow the sound to “echo,” just as the box of a guitar allows the sounds of the strings to echo.

To understand resonation, think about the way your voice sounds when you sing in a bathroom. Your voice sounds fuller because it “bounces around,” or echoes off the walls and ceilings. If you stretch a rubber band over a small box, resonation will produce a louder, fuller tone.

Your voice’s resonators are the throat, skull, sinuses, and chest cavity. Even the bones of the skull build and develop sound from the larynx. This process gives your voice much of its character. To learn how your voice sounds without some of your resonators, remember how you talk when a cold clogs your sinuses or when you pinch your nose shut. Why does your voice sound differently when you speak than when you hear it on recording tape? You usually hear your voice from the “inside,” without the same resonance that people “outside” hear.

Articulation Producing a full, rich sound is not the end of the voice production process. You must shape the sound into intelligible speech. The production of your language’s various sounds is called articulation. You use two kinds of articulators, fixed and movable.

Fixed articulators are those you can’t alter voluntarily Fixed articulators are those you can’t alter voluntarily. The most obvious example is your teeth. You use your teeth (in combination with other articulators) to produce many of the common sounds in English words. The th—in thirty, and three; the l—in lollipop; the f—in favorite; the v—in value, or the z—in zero.

Do you remember how hard it was to say words like these after your had lost your front teeth? But you may know how braces changed your ability to articulate. Another fixed articulator is the hard palate, a bone structure on the roof of your mouth that extends from behind your front teeth to about halfway back.

Move your tongue back along the roof of your mouth until you reach the end of the hard palate, and you will feel the soft palate. The soft palate gives with pressure of your tongue. This structure along with the tongue, jaw, and lips, are in the second category of articulators—movable articulators.

Poor articulation makes it difficult for your audience to understand you. Use your diaphragm, vocal chords, resonators, and articulators to create a voice that’s uniquely yours and that’s clear and expressive. Learning to control your voice takes practice and exercise.

Voice Quality Your voice is as individual as your thumbprint. No one else in the world has a voice that sounds exactly the same as yours. Audiences like voices that are firm, rich, and resonant. Which means they like speaking voices produced with sufficient air pressure from the diaphragm, they like speakers who relax their throats and vocal chords to avoid shrillness, and they like speakers who speak using all their resonators without overusing or understanding the nose and sinuses. In other words, they like speakers who articulate well.

Tools of Vocal Expression Your voice has three basic sets of controls: Volume Rate Pitch By handling these controls, you express a wide range of ideas and feelings. When you stand in front of a group, your voice may lose its natural liveliness and expression. This loss can make your speech ineffective. Variety in volume, rate, and pitch keeps an audience attentive, builds your personal appeal, and helps sell your message.

Volume, Intensity, and Emphasis It takes energy to control your diaphragm to produce the vibration that results in your voice. Volume—is the measure of how loud or soft your voice is. This characteristic should be your first concern because if you speak too softly no one in the audience will hear anything you say.

Your speech should be audible—which means it should be loud enough to be heard. If you’re sure your speech is audible, you can vary your volume. Intensity—is a way of communicating your emotional message.

Emphasis Varying volume and intensity allows a speaker to give emphasis to key words or phrases. Think about the words people usually emphasize when they quote Abraham Lincoln’s famous phrases, “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” If you read the words without increasing your volume, the key words lose their impact.

Managing Volume, Intensity, and Emphasis One mistake that speakers commonly make (especially debaters and contest speaker) is to begin a speech with so much volume and intensity that they can’t increase either quality. With no way to add variety in volume, intensity, or emphasis, speakers lose three of the tools of vocal expression.

Rate The speed at which you talk is your speech rate, and your rate communicates much to your audience. A very rapid rate can mean Anger, confusion, and impatience A slow rate can mean caution, fatigue, hopelessness, and sincerity. When you’re at ease, your speech rate usually takes care of itself. When you’re nervous, however, you may begin to speak rapidly without knowing it.

Pause Speaking too rapidly can also deprive speakers of one of their most important tools—the pause. The silences a speaker uses between words, phrases, and sentences add drama and meaning to a speech. Even a pause at the beginning of a speech, before your say a word, may set a strong mood.

Framing One particularly effective use of the pause is called framing, which is pausing slightly before and after a word or phrase. Read these sentences without framing: “Have you ever read one of Poe’s short stories? They may be scary even to you.” Now read them again, but frame the phrase “even to you.” Do you notice the difference? Framing gives the sentences drama—even a bit of playfulness.

Using Rate As you rehearse your speeches, practice variety in rate as well as pausing and framing. Pauses are often indicated by periods, commas, semicolons, and dashes.

Pitch Pitch—means the highness or lowness of your voice. Think of this characteristic as notes on a musical scale. Just as a melody moves up and down the scale, speaking also uses variety in pitch to express meaning. Example: The words “have a nice day” can be a question or a statement, depending on what you do with pitch when you say the word “day.”

Altering the pitch of your voice is called inflection. Vocal inflection is an important way to maintain audience attention. Without inflection, your voice becomes monotone, a flat, droning delivery that gets boring very quickly.

Articulation Articulation is how clearly and precisely you speak. Another word for articulation is enunciation. An audience relies on you to speak your words clearly.

Dropping Word Endings Sometimes, out of habit or laziness, people drop –ed, -ing, or some other word ending. “Going” becomes “goin.” Although dropped endings probably don’t bother your friends in casual conversation, they’re unacceptable in public speaking. Your audience expects you to pronounce words fully.

Running Words Together Because of speed, nerves, or both, some speakers run their words together. “Going to” becomes “gonna.” Running words together makes it almost impossible for an audience to understand whole sections of your speech.

Substituting Sounds Some speakers substitute one sound for another in words. Examples: Instead of “for,” they say “fer.” Some audiences will think this problem indicates the speaker lacks education manners.

Adding Sound This is a problem of adding sounds. Some people who know the correct pronunciation of “library” still say “liberry.”

Solving Common Voice Problems While you are speaking, watch your audience’s responses to determine if the audience is having difficulty understanding you. If necessary, adjust your voice during the speech until you have positive audience feedback. Finally, review your speeches, and listen carefully to evaluations. While some speech difficulties require work with a speech pathologist (someone trained to help people with speech handicaps), you can solve most of your problems with practice.