How people speak is something that I've thought about a lot and whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that a person's voice can 'do' magic, working on the tone and delivery of what's said can greatly increase its persuasiveness - for men, but especially for women.
This first occurred to me back in 1980s when I was sitting in a lively Student Union meeting. Most of the speakers were male but there was one woman speaker who had good ideas but was incredibly strident, to the point of being shrill, and almost everyone dismissed what she said. This happened at every meeting which must have been very frustrating for her. On the other hand the deeper tones of the male voices were listened to.
At that point I started to think seriously about my own voice and whether or not I was listened to. I'd heard that the then PM Margaret Thatcher had taken voice training classes to lower the tone of her voice in order to appear more authoritative, a tactic that worked very well for her. I read that her male MP's often called her 'Mummy' and many feared to contradict her. I tried it out myself, though without the classes, speaking more from the gut, and it has worked for me too; I'm treated with more respect. I call it my School Ma'am voice - slightly deeper than a woman's voice often is, warm, measured and a bit RP - but whilst using this method does get results, I wouldn't call it magic.
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branchandroot
Re: A query on particular accents/elocution
Date: 2025-04-28 12:03 pm (UTC)How people speak is something that I've thought about a lot and whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that a person's voice can 'do' magic, working on the tone and delivery of what's said can greatly increase its persuasiveness - for men, but especially for women.
This first occurred to me back in 1980s when I was sitting in a lively Student Union meeting. Most of the speakers were male but there was one woman speaker who had good ideas but was incredibly strident, to the point of being shrill, and almost everyone dismissed what she said. This happened at every meeting which must have been very frustrating for her. On the other hand the deeper tones of the male voices were listened to.
At that point I started to think seriously about my own voice and whether or not I was listened to. I'd heard that the then PM Margaret Thatcher had taken voice training classes to lower the tone of her voice in order to appear more authoritative, a tactic that worked very well for her. I read that her male MP's often called her 'Mummy' and many feared to contradict her. I tried it out myself, though without the classes, speaking more from the gut, and it has worked for me too; I'm treated with more respect. I call it my School Ma'am voice - slightly deeper than a woman's voice often is, warm, measured and a bit RP - but whilst using this method does get results, I wouldn't call it magic.
I've seen speaking that way called The Voice of Authority and there's a bit about it here: https://maryhartley.com/how-to-speak-with-authority-and-impact/