The human voice
Subtitle: how this extraordinary instrument reveals essential clues about who we are
By: Anne Karpf.
Edition: 1st U.S. ed.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub.; Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 399
ISBN-13: 9781582342993
Subjects: Voice; Elocution; Voice -- Social aspects
Description: "Beginning with a description of how the voice actually works, Anne Karpf goes on to investigate its vital role in the bonding of mothers and children, and eventually in all social interaction. She then opens the story out of explore the voice's psychological, social, emotional and cultural significance, investigating and challenging received wisdom of all kinds, from the stereotype of silent men and talkative women and the theory that only 7 per cent of our meaning is carried in the words we use, to the fascinating insight that children who have difficulty decoding voices are likely to be less popular with other children as early as kindergarten, and that we can recognise the emotion in another person's voice within sixty milliseconds of first hearing them speak."--BOOK JACKET
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [373]-388) and index.
Table of contents: title: What the voice can tell us; title: How the voice achieves its range and power; title: How we colour our voices with pitch, volume, and tempo; title: What makes the voice distinctly human; title: The impact of the mother's voice (even in the womb); title: Mothertalk: the melody of intimacy; title: The emergence of the baby's voice; title: Do I really sound like that?; title: How our emotions shape the sounds we make (and other people hear them); title: Male and female voices: stereotyped or different?; title: How men and women's voices are changing (and why); title: Cultural differences in the voice; title: From oral to literate society; title: The public voice; title: How technology has transformed the voice; title: Voiceprints and voice theft; title: How people and corporations are trying to change the voice.