What Does Your Voice Say About You?

We all sound so different from one another and have a distinctive tonal quality that is so distinctively ours.

Our voice also becomes our defining quality as it can reveal a lot about our personality and our emotional condition to others.

Speaking too fast reflects nervousness or excitement, while people who speak slowly appear calm, confident and in control.

People who speak in high, squeaky or whiny voices generally sound unpleasant and unstable. There’s a childlike quality in their voice that reflects immaturity.

A voice that sounds too nasal may convey boredom, complaint or self-depreciation or just plain whiney.

An individual who sounds throaty or hoarse may be perceived as unemotional, authoritative, indecisive or cautious.

The pitch and the speed at which we speak convey a lot more about us than the words we use.

The following exercise will help us understand that varying the emphasis on different words in a sentence completely changes the interpretation of the sentence –

Let us consider the sentence, ‘I didn’t say your service was bad.’ This sentence can be said in seven different ways, emphasizing a different word each time.

‘I didn’t say your service was bad.’
I – I didn’t say it, someone else did.
Didn’t – don’t put words in my mouth.
Say – I might have implied it, but I didn’t say it.
Your – Not yours, the company’s.
Was – Not was – is.
Bad – Not bad – it’s totally unacceptable.

Excerpts from The Teenager Today
Article by Savieta R Batra

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