The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are Review

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The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are ReviewAnimals 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.The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are Overview

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