We spent the entire Sociolinguistics class on Thursday discussing voices. It really got me started thinking about how important voices are in the way we think about people, I mean there's deep voices and high voices and there's "smoker's voice" "telephone voice" "gay voice" "valley-girl voice". As a class we decided that we associate deeper voices with more rational thinking and higher voices with more emotional sensitivity. And of course we associate deeper voices with men and higher voices with women. That's not too exciting, but then I started thinking about trends in voice-coolness. At different times different kinds of voices are kind of en vogue. Think of all those recordings we hear of women from the fifties singing, and how they all sound the same, high and chirpy. Now granted singing voices are different from talking voices, but when I was little all those high chirpy voices really freaked me out because I thought they sounded unnatural. Then there are those women who have deep voices, Lauren Bacall, Nico (Donna on That 70's Show). There's the deep, sultry voice and then the deep, authoritative voice--Margaret Thatcher (Captain Catherine Janeway).
But what really intrigues me is the recent trend toward higher-pitch in men's voices lately, the main examples I have are Ira Glass and Conor Oberst (aka Bright Eyes), but I hear this all over. It's not the same as the gay voice, which is also higher than normal, but it does have some similarities. This kind of metro/hipster voice conveys emotional sensitivity with a kind of geekiness (I think we're all familiar with the stereotypical geeky voice) and thus counter-culture hip intelligence. It's a very contrived voice, but, as proved by its presence on radio, it's very easy to listen to. This kind of all goes along with what I wrote earlier about hipster men as more sensitive. What I find really cool is that the trends of culture manifest themselves not only in dress and what we talk about but also in the voices we talk in. Our voices, as well as our words, give a kind of mini-biography to anyone able to read these highly encrypted messages.
Posted by linnea at October 10, 2006 10:34 AMSo this is really interesting to me, particularly when I think of the relationship between voice and accent. Southern Gay voice, for example, escapes the imagination at the moment, as does hipester BBC (reasssuring but authoritative?) But here is a question, how much of voice is actually a matter of meter? Ira Glass paces his voice. Is it the pauses that reassure us, that lend a sense of hesitancy? Or is it something else?
Posted by: jb at October 10, 2006 10:56 AMI've definitely heard the Southern Gay voice, from one of the workers at the French Quarters Hair Salon in Chattanooga. It threw me for quite a loop.
Posted by: heidi at October 10, 2006 11:06 AMThe Southern Gay voice is an interesting voice to bring up because, in my mind at least, a lot of the more educated Southern male voices have a kind of effeminateness, (must be the "genteel") so sometimes it's hard to tell whether what you're hearing is gay or not.
Posted by: linnea at October 10, 2006 12:32 PMYeah...our music prof was talking about Sigor Ros, Radiohead, and Coldplay as examples of a growing trend in "alternative forms of masculinity" heard primarily through their voices--the anguished, rather high sweeping vocals.
It's emotional sensitivity, but I see it as being in line with the more rational Intellectual masculinity that is pretty typical of Europe/UK anyway. This is emotional sensitivity that is not hysterically weepy but tragically noble.
Once upon a long time ago, (before football was invented perhaps), men were the ones with souls and feeling.
Once upon a long time ago, tenors were the heros and basses the comic buffoons or the villains.
Posted by: funke at October 10, 2006 1:44 PMI was deeply struck by this voice thing when, after years of listening to him as anchor of Morning Edition using his "anchor voice" I heard Bob Edwards in an interveiw with Terry Gross, right after he stepped down from anchor. He sounded so...human! If I hadn't known it was Bob beforehand, I might not have recognized him immediately. Definitely worth a peek into the archives.
Posted by: Jeannette at October 10, 2006 2:18 PM