-audiovisual study of the voice-
DU BOUT DE LA LANGUE/TIPS OF THE FRENCH/TONGUE
-audiovisual study of the voice-
Jean-Marc Raynal
Lavoisier Fellowship, 1991 and 1992
This study explores vocal production in the field of foreign language pedagogy.
It does not demonstrate a new pedagogic method. Rather, the investigation carried
out in this study yields general principles on the nature of voice that will
have specific consequences for the vocal pedagogy. A better understanding of
how the vocal/language/speech system works will give directions to help ‘retrain’
the innate tools we all learned to use when acquiring our mother tongue, that
is, our first foreign language.
In order to understand how systems function, scientists have long employed techniques
that reduce systems to their component parts. After the nature of each component
is determined, its manner of interaction is explored. Our method is exactly
the same. We explore the components of vocal production and their interactive
relationships as parts of language.
To examine how voice production is used in learning a foreign language, this
study combines, relates and synthesizes the work of more than 40 specialists
in several language/speech related field, sign language, artificial intelligence
and phonetics.
The following observations serve as the study’s foundation:
•Two definitions of the voice, invisible, yet essential dimension
of the human experience.
-An object of scientific investigation: As studied by theoretical sciences,
such as Phonetics and Acoustics, as well as Anthropology and the study of human
behavior.
-A personal and artistic experience: Each vocal performance is unique;
each vocal production has its unique characteristics. This experience is the
domain of Religion, Poetry, and Art, which govern the rules of its performance,
and the terms of its pedagogy.
•Learning a foreign language redefines one’s relationship with
one’s native language: one does not know one's (mother) tongue until one
learns a second language, called a foreign language. One realizes that the (verbal)
sounds one so easily makes to describe thoughts and feelings to others who share
the same tongue were once as strange as those of the new language one is now
learning. The first language –first, therefore foreign, was learned by
babbling, gurgling, grunting, whispering, shouting, laughing, and first and
foremost, by crying. The memory of those early productions of (vocal) sounds
has been forgotten, in the same manner as one has forgetten how one learned
to sit, walk, or ride a bicycle.
Speech and hearing have a complementary and continually redefining relationship.
The ear discriminates between voice productions, and compares them with those
from the environment. An infant plays with his mouth and tongue and listens
to the impact of the sounds on his eardrum. He begins to make organized and
repetitive sounds with his voice. His ear learns to perceive how well he is
articulating as he discriminates between his productions, and compares them
with those from the environment, enabling him then to refine his own productions.
•Speaking is an activity. Learning the spoken parts of a language
is entirely distinct from learning its grammar and syntax. The former emphasizes
skills, while the latter demands intellectual synthesis. Vocal production is
compared with other articulatory models, such as hand coordination, breathing,
puppetry, by showing musicians, athletes, actors, singers, and foreign language
students, learning and practicing their skills.
The articulatory mechanism of the vocal apparatus is as delicate a manipulation
as that of the strings of a puppet. It is inner subtlety combined with outer
micro-precision that determines the ultimate quality of a production, of voice
and body. Perfecting speech functions is not just a matter of developing the
body, a fact well known from actors and singers, but involves the mind and the
psyche as well. The mind, like a good musician, runs the activity of speech
through an harmonious coordination of the organs it animates. On the physical
side, speech is determinated by such factors as strength, flexibility, speed,
endurance and sense of touch. The actual outpouring of such creative acts is
channeled by the body. For example, it is known that a poor sense of balance
and rhythm often accompanies deafness: many deaf children find simple feats
of coordination extremely difficult. These faculties require concentration,
co-ordination, adaptation, and creative improvisation.
•Language is composed of a finite number of vocal elements, coordinatated
by the speaker to yield an infinite number of statements. The coordination of
these vocal elements becomes automatic, like an ‘improvised execution’.
Thus, the nature of oral training is its regularity, as it is the case in other
skills, such as dance, music, and in all vituoso performances. The skill is
in making it look easy and effortless. If the original manner of learning --
playful manipulation of vocal musculature to produce sound compounds -- is reintroduced,
with activities that correspond to developmental patterns of linguistic advances
in the child, the vocal skill will be reawakened and made available to the student
as he reenacts the babblings of the first steps he took into his mother tongue.
OUTLINE
The study begins with an examination of the intrinsic qualities of
the most elementary vocal form, and pre-verbal sound; it ends with an exploration
of the inherent characteristics of the most sophistical forms of voice production,
poetry and singing, which maximalize potential of meaning and sound.
1.VOICE BEFORE LANGUAGE
I am breathing, therefore I am
Underneath Language: Before presenting the process by which the voice becomes
language, the program starts with a presentation of elementary oral structures,
non-verbal and pre-verbal ones. What does the voice do before it is engaged
in the activity of speech or singing? What is the difference between human and
animal vocal sounds? What other ways do humans use to communicate with their
body?
This section explores the physiology, vocal anthropology, oral analytics, animal
sounds, to examine non-verbal and pre-verbal structures, and the objective correlations
between the body and the voice, that is, what the voice does before it can get
into the task of speech. Before getting into the business of making sense, the
vocal apparatus is asserting itself in collaboration with the senses.
1.1 Physiology of the Vocal Apparatus
Presentation of the bio-mechanics of the vocal apparatus.
•Celia STEWART explains that a single second of speech requires the coordination
of some 160 movements of the organs and ligaments which compose the vocal apparatus.
1.2 Vocal Anthropology
Speech accounts for only 10% of the communication process. Tone of voice,
use of silence, bodily tension, facial expression, the rhythm of movements,
use of space, gestures, and many other signals -some known, some unknown- play
a crucial role in communication: we communicate not only with our voice, but
with the body, and the space it cuts out. Words and body movements occur simultaneously
in the creation of a single event.
•Laurence WYLIE presents the body as a model for social organization, and
main agent of communicative strategies.
•Jacques LECOQ explores the coordination of body movements in the production
of speech.
•Kristin LINKLATTER and Ron PANVINI explore the mutual dependence of the
voice and the body in their practice as voice therapists.
1.3 Oral Analytics
The words flow on top, while underneath is a river of emotions, sometimes
calm, sometimes turbulent.
•Alexander LOWEN discusses his work with the voice in the therapeutic field.
•Marie-Louise AUCHER examines the relationships between the voice and the
mind.
1.4 From Sounds to Phonems
•André MARTINET, discusses the difference between phonation,
vocalization and speech, in animals and human beings.
1.5 Children's First Babblings
•Pediatricians, pediatric nurses and parents discuss children's milestones
in the linguistic advances of young children. Speech and melody, mixed at the
babbling stage, slowly separate.
•Very young babies are learning to swim and to walk.
2. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence is always artificial
This section considers facial expressions, speech synthesis and voice recognition,
deaf children's sign language acquisition, and the work of puppeteers as many
forms of communication produced through articulatory mechanisms and devices
which combine inner subtlety with outer micro-precision. These same qualities
regulate speech, which is obtained from the combination of a small number of
vocal elements, the ‘phonemes’.
2.1 The Face
The face is the most expressive plane. This complex surface until now has
proven very difficult for computers to recognize.The face is truly a multimedia
center of operations. STENDHAL, a contemporary of Charles DARWIN, understood
the importance of the face in the taming of passions and emotions.
•Examination of the sensory apparatus: perceptions, receptivity and responsiveness.
Facial musculature communicates with the voice, either approving of, or disapproving
its utterances, sometimes even disproving them.
2.2 Speech Synthesis and Voice Recognition
Presentation of research applications of Linguistics, notably of Phonology
and Phonetics, in the spech synthesis and voice recognition.
•Research programs are developed in various centers in the world, notably
that of IRCAM (Music Research Institute, Paris) and the University of Paris
III.
2.3 Hearing Deficiency
The teaching method of deaf children takes the form of a discovery of dramatic
phenomena: silence, sound, and words.
•The deaf child listens intently to a speaker, while at the same time he
watches his lips and puts his hand on his face so that he can feel his jaw muscles.
He spends hours of practice in breath control, mouthing vowels, and studies
speech positions with a model tongue and palate.
•Recent research in speech development has proven that a hand-related psychophysical
principle must be somehow involved in the learning process: as long as the fingers
are unable to move freely, speech cannot develop.
•Presentation of Laura Ann PETITTO's works on how hearing-impaired infants
use their hands to express themselves and communicate with the outside world.
2.4 Automaticity and Creativity: the (Model of the) Puppeteers
•Puppeteers demonstrate how they master the coordination of mechanical
devices until they can performe with them the most gracious figures, in other
words, until they can perform at will.
•This is put in perspective by comparing it with earlier scenes of infants
learning to swim and to walk.
2.5 Oral Gymnastics
The name of the exercise is regularity.
•Vocal training proceeds with activities relating to body movements, symbolic
representations, figure-ground perception, intersecting and embedded figures,
spatial positioning, voice discrimination, verbal and physical dramatization,
sound games, duplicating sound patterns, rhythmic dramatization and spatial
positioning, rhymes, music and songs. These activities are documented in various
institutions in Europe and North-America.
3. FOREIGN LANGUAGES
The mother tongue is a foreign language that has been remarkably well
learned (second nature)
This section delineates the process by which the foreign becomes incorporated
to the familiar to redefine the notions of maternal and foreign languages. It
examines French and English students learning their own and one another's languages
with Caleb GATTEGNO's didactics, which convert vocalic sounds into color. It
also examines oral training for people with hearing disabilities. Linguist André
MARTINET presents the history of French Language, in France, and other French-speaking
countries, and shows how words exist beyond their phonetic transcription.
3.1 The Familiar as Formerly Foreign
The process of the foreign becoming familiar is what the acquisition of
a skill consits of. One's first foreign language is one's mother tongue, that
is, a tongue which formerly was foreign, and thus had to be learned. That is
why this only comes in full view when one has begun to learn a foreign language,
to acknowledge that a language reflects its mechanisms in another one.
•Sounds and speech patterns of both English and French are sampled, offering
native speakers of these languages a contrasted perception of their mother tongue,
as it is heard spoken by foreign students.
•English and French kindergarten and primary school students learning their
native language are presented. Conversely:
•English speakers studying French, and French speakers studying English
are presented.
3.2 Foreign Language Pedagogy
•Caleb GATTEGNO exposes the technics he developed for teaching the
sounds and prosody of foreign languages. The sounds of the language are represented
by colors, which are redistributed in sequences, that is, in time, by hand movements.
This conversion of the linear, that is, temporal, sequence of the utterances
in the silent space of colored rectangles allows to separate the soundshape
of language from its time substance. One is then able to ask: “Let me see
what you are saying!”
•Carolyn FIDELMAN and Laurence WYLIE discuss the merits of approaches which
combine verbal and non-verbal activities.
•Peter GUBERINA presents applications of his work with deaf children in
the study of the speech patterns of foreign languages.
3.3 Evolution of Languages
•André MARTINET presents the factors which influence the evolution
of the soundshape of languages, including accent and diction changes.
•Jacques CHAURAND examines developments of the French language from the
Medieval period to the present time.
•Language development is considered in other French-speaking countries,
such as Senegal, Quebec, and Haiti.
4. WORDS AND MUSIC: POETRY & THE SINGING VOICE
Out of a mouthful of air
This section traces the bio-mechanics of the voice and the low structures of
speech as tools of communication that support the voice as an instrument of
eloquence and creativity. Vocal creations from poetic and theatrical performances
explore the interactions of the body and the mind in voice production, providing
with concrete realizations the categories and notions discussed in the program.
4.1 Archives for an Encyclopedia of Vocal Productions
Sound goes on record: Words exist beyond their denotations; the voice fluctuates
within the individual, and varies from one speaker to the next.
•Study of a collection of French speakers in a variety of settings and
situations, using the variables of age, class, gender, geography and emotional
context.
•Actors read slowly the transcripts of some particularly energetic vocal
performances, such as the radio broadcast of a football game, or one at an auction.
4.2 Poetry returns words to the source which gave them birth
Poetry is a deed, rather than the mere report of one. Indeed, poetry is
the most expressive and highest form of communication. Its possibility supports
the voice as an instrument of eloquence and creativity. As to the foreign language
student, it can be said that he is, in a sense, and in all innocence, engaged
in the same activity as the poet is, which is to “make it new”. For,
each time becomes a new time for he who takes sameness through innovative ways
of expressing it.
4.3 Singing is the Poetry of Voice
The body is a music intrument, which is played by the mind; its scales are
the thoughts and emotions through which the individual expresses himself.
•The segment presents activities, such as breathing, relaxation, body postures,
which are practiced, spontaneously and/or voluntarily, in vocal production,
from babbles to Sprächgesang, from prononciation drills to aria, on theatrical
and operatic stages, in foreign language classes, and in speech therapy sessions.
It presents a comparative study of the tasks performed by foreign language students,
singers, athletes, actors and musicians.
•Participants discuss their experience from the practice of learning and
teaching vocal skills. They explain how the practice of the instrument of the
voice brings about a new awareness of the way each production of a sequence
of gestures and words composes a decision; there are enough of them produced
to entrust each and every performance with the responsability of an interpretation
of the world.
COLLABORATORS
(*Video interview)
FRANCE
Jacques ALLIAUME, Université de Poitiers.*
Marie-Louise AUCHER, Association Nouvelle de Psychophonie.
Jean-Paul BASAILLE, Centre de linguistique appliquée, Université
de Besançon.*
Daniel BOUKO-LEVY, Voice Therapist.*
Eric CHARTIER, Stage Actor.*
Jacques CHAURAND, Author of a History of French Language.
Gustave CHOQUET, French Academy of Sciences.*
Gilbert COHEN-SOLAL, Pediatrician.
Georges ELISEE, Program Director of poetry courses in high school.
Yvan FONAGY, Psycholinguist.
Peter GUBERINA, Educator.
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PUPPETRY, Charleville-Mézières.
Thierry JOUNO, Centre socio-culturel des sourds, Vincennes.*
Jacques LECOQ, Ecole Internationale de Théâtre.
André MARTINET, Sorbonne, Université de Paris IV.*
Henri MESCHONNIC, Université de Paris VIII.
Valère NOVARINA, Writer.
Xavier RODET, Université de Paris III, IRCAM.
Alfred TOMATIS, M.D.*
Denis VASSE, Psychoanalyst.
Suzeanne VISONNEAU, Director of Pédagogia.*
Henriette WALTER, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, la Sorbonne.*
Roslyn YOUNG, Centre de linguistique appliquée, Université de
Besançon.
USA/CANADA
Raymond COMEAU, Harvard University.*
René DESCOUT, Artificielle Intelligence Center, Montréal, Canada.
English Language Classes, kindergarden and primary schools.
Carolyn FIDELMAN, University of Massachussetts.*
French Language Classes, high-school and college courses.
Caleb GATTEGNO, Educator.*
Kristin LINKLATTER, Boston University.*
Joan LA BARBARA, Vocal Performer.
Alexander LOWEN, M.D., Psychoanalyst.*
James NOBLITT, Institute for Academic Technology, North Carolina.
Ron PANVINI, Vocal Therapist, New York.*
Laura Ann PETITTO, McGill University, Montréal.
Roger SHATTUCK, Boston University.
Donald SOLA, Cornell University.*
Celia STEWART, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, N.Y .*
Laurence WYLIE, Harvard University.*
___________________________________________________________________________
This research program was made possible with two Fellowships Lavoisier, in 1991
and 1992. It was undertaken at the Maison Française of Columbia University
of New York City, which provided constant attention and warm support to the
development of the project. The Lavoisier Fellowship is a program of the Ministry
of Education in France to promote research in North America.