The following video provides examples of what vocal variety sounds like.
Vocalics, also known as paralanguage, is the subfield of nonverbal communication that examines how we use our voices to communicate orally. This means that you speak loudly enough for all audience members (even those in the back of the room) to hear you clearly and that you enunciate clearly enough to be understood by all audience members (even those who may have a hearing impairment or who may be English-language learners). If you tend to be soft-spoken, you will need to practice using a louder volume level that may feel unnatural to you at first. For all speakers, good vocalic technique is best achieved by facing the audience with your chin up and your eyes away from your notecards and by setting your voice at a moderate speed. Effective use of vocalics also means that you make use of appropriate pitch, pauses, vocal variety, and correct pronunciation.
Just like some of us are more expressive nonverbally, some of us are also more expressive vocally. Even if you are not expressive, vocal delivery skills can be learned and practiced to engage your audience and maintain their attention. Below we will discuss several aspects of vocal delivery you should consider and practice while rehearsing your speech.
Articulation
We are often judged by how well we speak in general. A measure of perceived intellect or education is how well we articulate. That is: how well and correctly we form our vowels and consonants using our lips, jaw, tongue, and palate to form the sounds that are identified as speech.
Enunciation refers to how clearly and distinctly sounds are formed. For instance, saying “going to” instead of “gonna” or “did not” instead of “dint” are examples of good versus poor articulation.
Pronunciation refers to how a particular word should sound. At times this may be challenging because it’s not always possible to tell how a word should sound by the way it is spelled.
Pro tips
- Look up the pronunciation of words you do not know. This is your speech – you should be able to pronounce words.
- Substitute words that you have difficulty pronouncing if possible.
- Practice enunciation while rehearsing.
- Use your speaking notes to provide reminders about words that you tend to articulate incorrectly.
Your ability to articulate your speech content accurately will influence your credibility as a speaker.
Pitch and Inflection
Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of a speaker’s voice. Some speakers have deep voices and others have high voices. As with one’s singing voice range, the pitch of one’s speaking voice is determined to a large extent by physiology (specifically, the length of one’s vocal folds, or cords, and the size of one’s vocal tract). We all have a normal speaking pitch where our voice is naturally settled, the pitch where we are most comfortable speaking, and most teachers advise speaking at the pitch that feels natural to you.
While our voices may be generally comfortable at a specific pitch level, we all have the ability to modulate, or move, our pitch up or down. In fact, we do this all the time. When we change the pitch of our voices, we are using inflection. Just as you can use volume strategically, you can also use pitch inflections to make your delivery more interesting and emphatic. If you ordinarily speak with a soprano voice, you may want to drop your voice to a slightly lower range to call attention to a particular point. How we use inflections can even change the entire meaning of what we are saying. For example, try saying the sentence “I love public speaking” with a higher pitch on one of the words—first raise the pitch on “I,” then say it again with the pitch raised on “love,” and so on. “I love public speaking” conveys a different meaning from “I love public speaking,” doesn’t it?
There are some speakers who don’t change their pitch at all while speaking, which is called monotone. While very few people are completely monotone, some speakers slip into monotone patterns because of nerves. One way to ascertain whether you sound monotone is to record your voice and see how you sound. If you notice that your voice doesn’t fluctuate very much, you will need to be intentional in altering your pitch to ensure that the emphasis of your speech isn’t completely lost on your audience.
Pro Tips
- Resist the habit of pitching your voice “up” at the ends of sentences. It makes them sound like questions instead of statements. This habit can be disorienting and distracting, interfering with the audience’s ability to focus entirely on the message. The speaker sounds uncertain or sounds as though he or she is seeking the understanding or approval of the listener.
- Practice reading children’s books to adjust pitch (and other vocals) and see how they feel different.
- Inflection and varied pitch must be “organic,” that is to say, natural for the speaker. You cannot fake it, or it sounds artificial and disingenuous. It is a skill that needs to develop over a period of time.
- Practice saying sentences with different intonation patterns to change the meaning. For example, if you make a statement with falling intonation at the end, you can turn it into a question by raising the intonation at the end. Try for example, “See what I mean,” and “See what I mean?”
The effective use of pitch is one of the keys to an interesting delivery that will hold your audience’s attention.
Rate
Rate is how fast or slow a person speaks. You can vary the rate depending on the emotions you are feeling or the type of message you are communicating. For example, if you are experiencing joy, you will speak at a fast rate compared to a speaker who is expressing surprise who will speak at a much faster rate. Normally, you speak about 125 words per minute. But you may speak much slower at about 100 wpm if you are giving a slide presentation.
| Table 12.1: Finding the Right Pace for Your Speech |
| If you speak too quickly… |
If you speak too slowly… |
| the audience might get the impression you have nothing important to say. |
the audience might think you are too tired to be presenting. |
| the audience has a difficult time catching up and comprehending what you are saying. They need time to digest the information. So plan on periodic pauses. |
the audience can forget the first part of your sentence by the time you get to the last! (It happens!) And they lose interest. |
| the audience might think you really do not want to be there. |
the audience might think you are wasting their time by taking longer than necessary to relay your message. |
| As a speaker, you cannot race with the audience, nor drag their attention down. Like Goldilocks, look for the pace that is “just right.” |
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In order to retain clarity of the speech with articulation and inflection, the speaker must be aware that there is a range of appropriate tempo for speaking. If the tempo is too slow, the speech might resemble a monotonous peal. If it is too fast, the articulation could suffer if consonants or vowels are dropped or rushed to keep up the speed. An audience could become frustrated with either extreme. The tempo needs to be appropriate to the speaker’s style while maintaining a comfortable and clear pace is. An ideal speaking rate will allow you to comfortably increase your pace to create a sense of excitement or slow down to emphasize the seriousness of a topic.
Pro Tips
- When speaking you want to speak at a varied rate so that you can emphasize important parts of your message.
- You also want to change the rate for the mood or emotion of the message and the occasion. If you want to show excitement at a pep rally you will naturally speak at a faster rate than if you were speaking at a funeral where you would speak slower because you are sad or contemplative.
- You might also speak slower if you are making choices and thinking carefully about what you are saying; a slower pace may convey your thoughtfulness to the audience.
- Use a recorder to record your speech so you can clock your actual speaking rate.
- Finally, ask yourself if you are speaking too fast because you are nervous!
Pauses Versus Vocalized Pauses
Pauses can enhance delivery or be filled needlessly and distract the audience.
A pause may refer to a rest, hesitation, or temporary stop. It is an interval of silence and may vary in length. The speaker may use pauses to enhance the message delivery or fill the pauses needlessly and distract the audience from the message. You may use a pause to emphasize that the information coming next is important, or to give the audience time to process what you have just said. Consider some of the ways that you might use pauses effectively in your delivery.
Effective Pauses
- Pause enables the speaker to gather thoughts before delivering the final appeal: pause just before the utterance, think about what you want to say, and then deliver your final appeal with renewed strength.
- Pause prepares the listener to receive your message: pause and give the attention powers of your audience a rest. The thought that follows a pause is much more dynamic than if no pause had occurred.
- Pause creates effective suspense: suspense can create interest. The audience will want to find out the conclusion or what happened if you pause before the punch line or conclusion.
- Pause after an important idea: pausing gives the audience time to process what you have just said before you continue with your delivery.
- Pause at the end of a unit: you may pause to signal the close of a unit of thought, such as a sentence or main point.
Different types of pauses that could present problems for the speaker:
Ineffective Pauses
- Speech Disfluencies are breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables that occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech, including false starts (words and sentences that are cut off in the middle), phrases that are restarted and repeated, grunts, or fillers like uh, erm, and well.
- Filled Pauses are repetitions of syllables and words; reformulations; or false starts, where the speaker rephrases to fit the representation of grammatical repairs, partial repeats, or searching for words to carry the meaning.
- Filler Words are spoken in conversation by one participant to signal to others that he or she has paused to think, but is not yet finished speaking. Different languages have different characteristic filler sounds. The most common filler sounds in English are: uh /ə/, er /ɚ/, and um /əm/.
- y’know
- so
- actually
- literally
- basically
- right
- I’m tellin’ ya
- you know what I mean.
- Placeholder Names are filler words like thingamajig, which refer to objects or people whose names are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown.
Pro Tips
- Record a conversation and count the use of unnecessary pauses and filler words in relation to the other words in the speech. See if you can reduce the ratio over time.
- Remember that as you become more confident and familiar with speaking it will be easier to reduce the frequency of many of the unnecessary filler words and pauses.
- Read aloud a text using purposeful pauses.
Projection
Volume is the loudness of the speaker. The volume produced by the vocal instrument is projection. Supporting the voice volume with good breathing and energy can be practiced, and helping a speaker develop the correct volume is the main task of a vocal trainer, teacher, or coach. Good vocal support with good posture, breathing, and energy should be practiced regularly, long before a speech is delivered.
When speaking naturally without any amplification you need to keep in mind the distance to be covered by your voice. You might compare speaking with the act of throwing a ball. Consider how much more muscular effort is needed to throw the ball a long distance than is required to throw it a short one. As you speak, think of your words as balls and mentally watch them covering the space between you and your audience. Notice how you unconsciously lengthen the voice. If speaking in a face-to-face group without a microphone ask yourself if you are loud enough to be heard by audience members in the last row. Speaking to a large group will require more energy to breathe and control your sound production.
While there is no need to shout, a speaker should project to be easily heard from the furthest part of the audience. Even if the speech is amplified with a microphone/sound system, one must speak with projection and energy. As with your rate of speech, you should speak at a volume that comfortably allows you to increase the volume of your voice without seeming to shout or decrease the volume of your voice and still be heard by all audience members.
Pro Tips
- Practice speaking in a large room with a friend who moves farther and farther away from you until the friend reaches the rear of the room and can still hear you.
- Make sure that you are standing straight and not cramped so you have the maximum capacity for breathing and forcing air out of the lungs for sound production.
- Practice speaking by thinking of people at different distances from you such as at your elbow, across the room, or in the back of a large hall.
Practice vocal variation!
Find a listening partner. Using only the sounds of “la” ha,” and “oh,” covey the meaning of the following:
1. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen!
2. I’ve fallen and can’t get up!
3. I’ve got a crush on him/her.
4. That soup is disgusting and spoiled.
5. I got an “A” in my Speech Final!
If you cannot relay the meaning with just sounds, try a second time (each) with gestures and facial expressions until the listener understands. Then say the lines with the expressive inflections you have developed using only the sounds.
- Vocal variety adds interest to your speech.
- We can use changes in our vocals to emphasize points, lead the audience in a direction, transfer emotions, and build credibility.
- For some of us, vocal variety is more natural and some of us need to practice vocal variety.
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