Le Mot Juste Linguistics Blog

You may well ask yourself, “What do these speakers do that I should do?” They do nothing extraordinary, nothing that the ordinary person cannot do with practice. A plan for voice improvement is not difficult to draw up, but improvement may be slow in showing itself. Persist in the practice every time you speak and you will develop a voice that will be clear, that will be easily adjusted to the place and the situation. Every time that you speak, think that consequent clarity of speech and tone are to be the marks at which you shoot, as well as the social control you want to exercise over your listeners.

What then are the aims and the means toward which you should direct your attention to develop a clear voice?

By clear speech is meant production of the voice so that it is distinct, intelligible, unobstructed, and plainly audible we recognize that same quality when we use the phrase “a clear mind,” and we sense the same feeling when, after ft cold, we say we have “a clear head.” This clear voice comes through the vocal apparatus with that same free unobstructed passage as our thoughts when the mind is unclouded or as our breath when the nasal passages are open.

Wendell Phillips, American orator, said of one speaker, “I seemed to hear his voice reverberating and re-echoing back to London from the Rocky Mountains … all the while no effort — he seemed only breathing.”