Foundations of Voice Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Voice Production and Perception

Exploring questions of how and why the quality of a person?s voice influences our perceptions, Foundations of Voice Studies provides a comprehensive introduction to, and analysis of, the multifaceted role that voice quality plays in our social lives. Beginning with an approachable and thorough overview of various aspects of vocal physiology and its control, Kreiman and Sidtis examine the neurological and sociological contexts for producing and listening to voices. Replete with fascinating sidebars and discussions of how voices are used in advertising and media, and legal and forensic issues of identifying voices, they have written an essential work that unifies the results of their own pioneering studies with the most current scientific literature. This unique and interdisciplinary volume on all facets of voice production and its perception is supported by sound files and additional material, available at www.wiley.com/go/voicestudies.

1 Introduction. 2 Producing a Voice and Controlling Its Sound. 3 Neurological Foundations of Voice Production and Perception. 4 Physical Characteristics and the Voice: Can We Hear What a Speaker Looks Like? 5 Recognizing Speaker Identity From Voice: Theoretical and Ethological Perspectives and a Psychological Model. 6 The Brain Behind the Voice: Cerebral Models of Voice Production and Perception. 7 Identifying Unfamiliar Voices in Forensic Contexts. 8 Linguistic Uses of Voice Quality: How Voice Signals Linguistic and Pragmatic Aspects of Communication. 9 Perception of Emotion and Personality from Voice. 10 Miscellany: Voice in Law Enforcement, Media and Singing. References. Author Index. Subject Index.

Jody Kreiman is Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and has published over 60 scholarly papers in a variety of journals. Diana Sidtis (formerly Van Lancker) is Professor of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University and performs research at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. An experienced clinician, her research has yielded over 90 articles in scholarly journals and edited books.

“Foundations of Voice Studies has won the American Publishers Award for professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) for best book of 2011 in the areas of Language and Linguistics. It has been praised as “a gem” by David Pisoni of Indiana University and “a remarkable book” by Stefanie Shattuck–Hufnagel of MIT. Even just its tables make this an invaluable book, worthy of a spot in every phonetician’s library.”  ( The Phonetician ,  1 January 2011)