For all the sounds which radio
uses, speech is its most
significant, its primary signifier. Without it, radio would be nothing,
Wall-to-wall(全面覆盖的) music and noise, expunged(删掉的) of all
verbal(口头的) information, would render radio inarticulate(口齿不清的) and
uncommunicative.
Radio’s most significant code
l Speech lends structure to the daily schedule and provides the
context in which music operates as meaningful entertainment.
l The broadcasting day would be the same from start to finish: jazz in
the morning, the afternoon and the evening, with only changes of tempo to
distinguish the times of day. Such a service might be seamless(无缝的) but it
would also be senseless and soulless.
l Speech has had an increasingly important role to play in radio
broadcasting in recent years.
l Whilst music radio has proved increasing costly(昂贵的), talk
radio has been used more and more, mainly in the form of phone-ins. (观众热线电话直播节目) Reasons as follows:
1.
Partly this is to do with
matters of economy. (cost-cutting)
2.
Enable stations to establish
closer and more interactive relationships with their audience.
3.
At the same time, the voices of
listeners repeatedly broadcast over the airwaves also allow radio stations to
established distinct identities; identities that correspond to those of the
communities they serve.
l Speech is a crucial part of a radio station’s branding, its
construction of a particular image.
l Speech can be (and is) used to articulate(明确有力地表达) a
station’s identity, helping it to attract specific types of audience(in terms
of class, age, regionality, gender, ethnicity, etc.).
l Listeners may select a particular station or channel for the type of
music it plays, but nevertheless the content and style of its speech will still
be a significant factor in attracting listeners and gaining their loyalty.
Ex: The use of speech on
Classic FM is more attractive, more friendly and more conductive(传导的) to establishing a close rapport(密切关系) with
listeners than BBC Radio 3.
l The importance of speech in determining audience preferences has
been recognised throughout the radio industry, which help station controllers
make careful decisions about its content, style and delivery.
l What is regarded as a suitable topic for discussion on a radio station will be
determined by the nature of the audience and its values and beliefs.
l The decision to broadcast talks on such subjects as politics,
religion, healthcare, crime, unemployment, race discrimination(种族歧视),
abortion, sex or fashion will be determined largely by the (perceived) needs
and interests of a station’s listenership. (the nature of the audience)
l However, it’s not simply a matter of what issues to talk about but
also the style of the language used to describe or discuss particular subjects.
Eg: apply dialects, vocabulary of certain subcultural groups to win the target
audience.
l Different “interest groups” have their own idioms and modes of
speech on radio.
l ‘political correctness’ 识时务；合时宜
l Language has become an increasingly sensitive issue in recent times,
and that sensitivity
has to be recognised and reflected by both public service and commercial radio stations.
l Finally, having determined the content and language of their speech
broadcasts , a station must also consider the delivery of speech, paying
particular attention to the appropriateness
of specific modes of speech for particular types of programme. (different
in terms of tone, pitch, pace and accent )
l Presenters must somehow find ways of expressing their own unique
personalities through their modes of speech whilst simultaneously adopting the
corporate style of the station.
l Idiosyncratic(特质的；特殊的) speech styles are
obviously permissible可允许的 but only within the confines限制 of the
prescribed规定 speech policies of the station which determine the content, style
and delivery of all speech broadcast in its programmes.
l The desire of individual presenters to establish their own style,
the need for different types of programme to adopt different modes of speech,
and the need for individual radio stations to carve out their own particular
niche合适的职位within the market by attracting more specialised audiences, are all
factors which contribute to the tremendous极大的，巨大的；diversity
of speech forms on radio today.
l Jonathan Raban said speech is “chaotically eclectic折衷主义”,
ranging from the most elaborate精心制作的 and carefully
scripted language through to what he describes as ‘the most unofficial and unrehearsed未经预演的grunts呼噜声 and
squawks抗议’(Raban, 1981:86-7)
l Radio speech can be informal, intimate, natural and gossipy or
authoritative有权威的, public, preachy爱唠叨的 and artificial, with a huge range of
possibilities between these two extremes.
l Radiogenic适于无线电广播的
Radio speech
l Andrew Crisell, in his book Understanding
Radio, suggests that much of the speech we hear on radio is scripted and,
as such, it has a literary nature. Scripted speech, he points out, is (like
literature) premeditated rather than spontaneous. Instead, radio speech tends
to be ‘more fluent, precise and orderly, less diffuse and tautological同义反复的；类语叠用的,
than ordinary speech’ (Crisell 1992: 58)
l However, Crisell notes that although much of radio speech is
scripted, this is ordinarily disguised.伪装的
l According to Crisell the main reason is because the act of reading
implies absence. What he means by
this is that speech that is all too obviously scripted exposes the separation
of addresser and addressee (the broadcaster and the listener).
l The more natural and spontaneous it sounds the more informal and
intimate will be the relationship with their audience.
l The significance of the gap between broadcaster and listener and the
implications of this gap for radio speech
l
Paddy Scannell, in his Broadcast Talk, writes that ‘the central fact of broadcasting is
that it speaks from one place and is heard in another’ (Scannell 1991:2)
l Broadcasters have first to understand the conditions of reception
and express their understanding of these conditions in the language of their
broadcasts. ‘The voices of radio are heard in the context of household
activities and other household voices’ (Scannell 1991:3)
l Because of this, the style of radio talk must be as informal and conversational as that of the
ordinary ‘interaction
between people in the routine contexts of day-to-day life and especially in the
places in which they live’ (Scannell 1991:4).
l Two modes of speech: mundane opposed to institutional
l Ian Hutchby has written that ‘mundane
talk is designed, interactively, explicitly明确地for co-participants and is differentiated from institutional talk by the fact that the
latter is designed, and
displays itself, as being designed, explicitly
for overhearers无意中听到的人’ (Hutchby 1991:119).
l There is a contradiction: the privacy and the publicity of the
radio. Nevertheless, despite its status as a mass (and one-way) medium of
communication, radio speech clearly strives to create the illusion of personal
and intimate verbal interaction, implying not only intimacy but also
participation and reciprocity. (互利性)
l Ian Hutchby has argued that the kinds of talk used on talk radio
(i.e., radio interviews
and phone-ins)
reveal ‘a variety of features which formally liken it to everyday or “mundane”
conversation, on the one hand, and more “institutional” forms of verbal
interaction (e.g. broadcast news, interviews, courtroom or classroom exchanges), on the other’
(Hutchby 1991: 119)
l Between mundane and institutional, we could call it intermediate.
(the thing we would like to get to)
All things are scripted. But
we want to pretend it is and convince others. Mundane talk is casual, pub talk,
friend talk. Institutional is seriously scripted like BBC.
l In describing radio speech as intermediate, we can acknowledge the fact that,
however mundane radio speech sounds, it is invariably self-conscious,
performative and designed to be heard (publicly), offering few, if any,
opportunities for listens
to participate in the communicative act.
l What is clear from even the slightest acquaintance了解with radio
news broadcasts is the range of speech styles, from the impersonal, formal,
precise (institutional) speech of the news readers, through to the
personalized, informal, imperfect (mundane) speech of the ‘man(or woman) in the
street’, with the speech of the experts, observers and correspondents coming
somewhere between the two.
l Elwyn Evans argues that radio
broadcasting requires a high degree of personalization in the sense to involve
an individual listener with whom the broadcaster has an intimate acquaintance.
l Whilst Evan’s statement suggests that the most effective radio
speech is one which uses both direct address and informal language, it also
implies that the experience of radio listening is one of collusion勾结；共谋, one in
which the listener is prepared to meet the broadcaster halfway.
l Achieving an intimate and personal relationship with the listener is
easily accomplished since the listener is so willing to be duped欺骗.
l It would also seem that behind radio’s apparently casual and
spontaneous flow of words there often lurks a calculated and meticulously
constructed text. HOWEVER, radio speech is hampered阻碍 by
complexity. Because the radio is invisible, the structure of the sentence
should be simple.
l Broadcasters must consider the ear’s short-term memory of the
audience. (repetition&
sign-posting)
l A greater advantage of an
aural medium over print lies in the sound of the human voice- the warmth, the
compassion, the pain and the laughter. A voice is
capable of conveying much more than reported speech. It has inflection音调变化 and
accent, hesitation and pause, a variety of emphasis and speed. The vitality活力 of radio
depends on the diversity of voices
which it uses and the extent to which it allows the colourful turn of
phrase and local idiom. (McLeish
1994:7)
l As McLeish’s statement suggests, the emotional content of radio
speech (and the speaker’s character and psychology) is conveyed less by their
choice of specific words as by the manner in which their words are spoken.
l The ways in which words are spoken, whether on the radio or in
everyday conversation, introduce levels of connotative meanings. In most cases this is a
matter of stress.
(stress in different word in different pitch. Tone, volume and speed)
l Different accents can evoke particular social or cultural factors,
such as class, education, regionality, nationality, etc.
l
Rudolf Arnheim, in one of the
first serious studies as an artistic medium, wrote that the sound of spoken words has a more
powerful and direct effect than their meanings. But it should keep a balance.
l The constant danger of scripted speech is that the natural stresses produced
by spontaneous speaking
can all too easily be lost.
l If radio broadcasters generally use scripts in the manner
advocated by Elwyn Evans then it would seem that the
principal function of the radio script is merely to prompt提白the speaker
rather than dictate口述their every utterance表达. It shows
a degree of spontaneity.
l Steps:
1)
Prepared rather than scripted
or spontaneous
2)
Intermediate rather than
institutional or mundane
3)
Personal (through the use of
direct address)
4)
Simple rather than complex
in structure
5)
Highly connotative due to the greater
expressivity of the spoken rather than the written word.
Radio voices
l Frances Dyson, in her essay ‘The genealogy of the radio voice’
(1994), has drawn attention to the fact the radiovoice has a heritage (a
tradition of public speaking and oration) and a set of conventions.
l The radio voices are experienced editing.
l For Dyson, the credibility of the radio voice is assured by the
audience’s desire to believe in what they hear. It is not that audiences are
ignorant of the ‘mechanical and electronic mediation’ of the radio voice but
that they have a vested interest in believing that what they hear is authentic
and live. (Dyson, 1994:179)
l Clearly, the last thing broadcasters wish to convey to their
listeners is the fact that the radio voice is an artificial construction to
show their the authenticity of the radio.
l The voices of the callers heard alongside and in contrast to those
of the professional radio presenters demonstrate the extent to which the radio
voice is a contrivance 发明；计谋and a construction or, at the very least, a refinement提纯 of
ordinary speech.
l National, regional
and ethnic accents may have been widely adopted by the
presenters on radio stations, along with more personal and idiosyncratic特殊的；异质的
speech patterns, but still the radio voice remains more formal, more self-conscious and more authoritative
than voices heard in everyday life.
l When set beside the untrained and untreated voices of callers on phone-in programmes,
the voices of radio presenters seem anything but natural or mundane.
l Now, in fact, the emphasis is very much on personality and
informality (hence intimacy)
with only few exceptions (e.g., news bulletins)
l Received Pronunciation was designed to set the standard of spoken
English in Great Britain in the late 1920s and 1930s.
l The relationship between the speech voice and the gender:
‘The most consistently excluded or derided嘲弄 voice is feminine. Not only has radio’s mode of direct address developed from oratory雄辩；演讲术, a traditionally masculine pursuit,
but radio’s fundamental technology, the microphone, was originally designed for
the male vocal range’ (Dyson 1994: 181)
l As David Graddol and Joan Swann point out in their book Gender Voices, ‘TV and radio producers
are notoriously声名狼籍地 circumspect谨慎的 about using women for “serious” work, such as news bulletins’.
l
It is a kind of prejudice.
l Social psychology is one area of research which offers broadcasters
some justification理由；辩护for using lower-pitched
voices (hence male voices or masculine female voices) for erious educational,
documentary or news programmes.
l As Dyson puts it, ‘to be listened to or even heard on radio, women
have to adopt the persona of the ideal male voice’.
l According to the research of the American Communications analysts
Carol Ann Valentine and Banisa Saint Damian, it carried out that the ideal
radio voice is composed of both male and female vocal qualities.
l Their analysis reveals the ideal voice has more in common with the
ideal male voice than it does with the ideal female voice.
l (i) refined精确的；有教养的 (ii) masculine (iii) authoritative
l (i) The radio voice is more refined than ordinary, everyday voices.
It is amplified and edited.
l (ii) Whilst the radio voice possesses masculine and feminine
characteristics, the ideal radio voice approximates more to male than female
vocal qualities.
l (iii) Both of these factors- refinement and masculinity- can be seen
to invest the radio voice with authority.
Summary:
This chapter
presents us with some basic guidelines for analyzing forms of radio talk;
whether it be in terms of its choice of words, the manner in which those words
are spoken or, ultimately, the way in which those words are heard.
Music, noise and silence
l Non-verbal codes, he noise and music are still integral to the
medium. They evoke radio’s moods, emotions, atmospheres and environments. They
provide a fuller picture and a richer texture.
l It is therefore necessary to combine verbal and non-verbal sounds in
order to provide listeners with an experience that is both meaningful and evocative,
which can open our imaginations and our emotions. They resonate with associations,
triggering emotional responses in us that lie beyond words.
l But if they are to provoke specific and meaningful response in us
they require words to anchor them, to harness and direct their potential to
stimulate ideas and feelings, to enhance their significance (i.e., their
ability to signify).
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