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.”
At the outset, it is perhaps best to identify some of those qualities in a voice which detract from clear speech. You have heard these in many speakers’ voices either in an auditorium or hall or over the radio. Recall some voices which have these characteristics or combination of them: husky, weak, high-pitched, grating, nasal, rasping, sing-song, metallic. Often the sounds are made to rush forth too rapidly—the words practically explode: sometimes the speaker is so lacking in energy that the sounds are scarcely audible. All of these qualities and methods you have heard, and each one illustrates a speaker who is using his vocal mechanism improperly.
These faults, to be sure, are not confined to inexperienced speakers: many prominent men well known to the public have never taken the time to control the throat and breathing mechanism to make the sounds of English properly.
All speakers of the present day should master this mechanism because of its importance in producing the kind of voice which makes either a favorable or unfavorable impression on their hearers. Persons who speak in public must take special note of the factors of voice production because they most often speak over a public address system, which tends to magnify their faults. Every speaker should use his voice to carry properly to the microphone so that when the voice is amplified it will neither blast nor be a whisper. Of these factors more will be given later, but it is essential to keep this in mind in the preparation and practiced delivery of any speech.
Whenever you speak, it is for some special purpose. You call a friend on the telephone to check on where you are to meet or to clear up something that has bothered one of you. Perhaps you want to be at the proper place on time, or you want your side of an issue to be understood. Or in an entirely different sphere, the housewife calls the electrician because, let us say, the mechanical icebox has gone wrong. Through speech she sets a time when he can repair it. Or assume that you speak at a club meeting. Why? Again, you want something to be made clear to the members which you think is at present not clear. If they see the reasonableness of your view, their actions may be changed thereby. You are asked to speak to a small gathering, and you accept because you have something that you want to “get across” that will make your listeners understand better, make them react more favorably to your reasoning. A President of the United States speaks over the radio. He wants something clarified and desires a certain response awakened in the listeners. All speaking — from the most simple to the most complex—is performed in order to attain some end, or in other words, to obtain a response from others and to influence others to perform something in a certain way.
You have listened to speakers whose voices were not well used, not clear. They may have been important men, their speeches may have been important speeches, but think how much more effective they would have been if they had used their vocal instruments properly.
Theodore Roosevelt was an excellent speaker so far as his ideas, his energy, and his forcefulness were concerned, but his voice could scarcely be heard in a large crowd. He realized it and tried to overcome the disability by straining his voice until it became, on occasions, a high, thin, strident voice. Wendell Willkie certainly did not lack in ideas or in personal forcefulness, but he never learned to use his voice properly and in the presidential campaign of 1940 he was, for part of the time at least, under the care of a physician to relieve the strains and tensions in his larynx. Alfred E. Smith was a forceful speaker, too, but he also lost his voice” in his presidential campaign because of improper use. His speaking voice was always breathy and harsh and these bad qualities could have been eliminated through careful work. You may possibly recall a number of radio speakers who displease you so much that sometimes you even turn them off because you do not like their voices. To be sure some of these speakers have to use their voices in just that particular way to portray the characters they represent; but when they speak in their own right, in their own person, they may carry over some of these improper uses, to the detriment of their ordinary voices.
On the other hand, of course, there are practiced speakers who use their voices properly and easily. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill mastered their vocal expression, and only infrequently, in times of stress, did their voices show strain. The list could easily be expanded. Strain is not necessary even in a speaker who is using his voice during many of his working hours.
