Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton May 20, 2022

The social semiotic study of vocal acting – the Hollywood Golden Age films as examples

  • Zhen Zhang ORCID logo EMAIL logo
From the journal Multimodal Communication

Abstract

This study argues that voice is a communicative tool used in people’s daily life, and it can also be a vocal apparatus for actors to deliver acting functions in films. In this study, the author demonstrated how actors project voice qualities of pitch, loudness and intonation to achieve various communicative functions in vocal acting by investigating four selected Hollywood films. The speech analysis tool Praat was used to process actors’ voice qualities in the selected data to verify the argument. After investigation, this research discovered that actors can use voice qualities to represent information and emotion and indicate characters’ attitudes, relationships and situations. Moreover, this research revealed that actors’ voice is more dynamic than other acting participants (such as makeup, costume).


Corresponding author: Zhen Zhang, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, E-mail:

References

Apple, W., Streeter, L.A., and Krauss, R.M. (1979). Effects of pitch and speech rate on personal attributions. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 37: 715–727, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.5.715.Search in Google Scholar

Bänziger, T. and Scherer, K.R. (2005). The role of intonation in emotional expressions. Speech Commun. 46: 252–267.10.1016/j.specom.2005.02.016Search in Google Scholar

Bordwell, D., Staiger, J., and Thompson, K. (2005). The classical hollywood cinema: Film style and mode of production to 1960. Taylor & Francis e-Library, London.Search in Google Scholar

Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (2008). Film art: an introduction, 8th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.Search in Google Scholar

Chion, M. (1994). Audio-vision: sound on screen. Columbia University Press, New York.Search in Google Scholar

Chion, M. (1999). The voice in cinema. Columbia University Press, New York.Search in Google Scholar

Crystal, D. (1969). Prosodic systems and intonation in English. Combridge University Press, Great Britain.Search in Google Scholar

Drake, P. (2006). Reconceptualizing screen performance. J. Film Video 58: 84–94.Search in Google Scholar

Education. (2018). Noise [Online]. Victoria State Government, Available at: <https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/students/beyond/Pages/noise.aspx#:∼:text=The%20scale%20used%20to%20measure,shout%20to%20make%20yourself%20heard> (Accessed 2 May 2021).Search in Google Scholar

Gobl, C. and Chasaide, A. N. (2003). The role of voice quality in communicating emotion, mood and attitude. Speech Commun. 40: 189–212, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0167-6393(02)00082-1.Search in Google Scholar

Halliday, M. (1967). Intonation and grammar in British English. Paris, Mouton.10.1515/9783111357447Search in Google Scholar

Halliday, M. (1970). A course in spoken English: intonation. Oxford University Press, London.Search in Google Scholar

Halliday, M. (1985). Spoken and written language. Oxford University Press, UK.Search in Google Scholar

Hollinger, K. (2006). The actress: hollywood acting and the female star. Routledge, New York.Search in Google Scholar

Kozloff, S. (2000). Overhearing film dialogue. University of California Press, Berkeley.Search in Google Scholar

Krauss, R.M. and Chiu, C.-Y. (1998). Language and social behavior (pre-editing copy). In: Gilbert, D., Fiske, S., and Lindsey, G. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology, 4th ed., Vol. 2. McGraw-Hill, Boston, pp. 41–88.Search in Google Scholar

Kress, G.R. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: the grammar of visual design. London and New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203619728Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, London.10.7208/chicago/9780226470993.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Laver, J. (2009). The description of voice quality in general phonetic theory. Work Prog.-Univ. Edinb., Dept. Ling. 12: 30–52.Search in Google Scholar

Monaco, J. (2009). How to read a film: movies, media, and beyond. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.Search in Google Scholar

Pittenger, R.E., Hockett, C.F., and Danehy, J.J. (1960). The first five minutes. Paul Martineau, Ithaca and New York.Search in Google Scholar

Silverman, K. (1988). The acoustic mirror: the female voice in psychoanalysis and cinema (Theories of Representation and Difference). Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.Search in Google Scholar

Springer, C. and Levinson, J. (2015). Acting-behind the silver screen series. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey.Search in Google Scholar

Stam, R., Burgoyne, R., and Flitterman-Lewis, S. (2005). New vocabularies in film semiotics: structuralism, post-structuralism and beyond. Routledge, London and New York.10.4324/9780203977194Search in Google Scholar

Stevens, S.S. (1935). The relation of pitch to intensity. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 6: 150–154, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1915715.Search in Google Scholar

Van Leeuwen, T. (1999). Speech, music, sound. Macmillan, Basingstoke.10.1007/978-1-349-27700-1Search in Google Scholar

Van Leeuwen, T. (2009). Parametric systems: the case of voice quality. In: Jewitt, C. (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. Routledge, London and New York, pp. 68–77.Search in Google Scholar

Watts, C.R. and Awan, S.N. (2019). Laryngeal function and voice disorders: basic science to clinical practice. USA, Thieme.10.1055/b-006-161128Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2020-03-03
Accepted: 2022-05-02
Published Online: 2022-05-20

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 29.11.2023 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/mc-2021-0012/html
Scroll to top button