Voice of reason
I’ve been trying to think of how to write a blog post about the election without it just being a litany of all the ways I hate John McCain. Although if you would like a semibiased source for many reasons why you might want to vote against him, this article in Rolling Stone might be for you. Anyway, as I was listening to him say a bunch of inflammatory shit in the debate last night, I found myself listening not to what he was saying, but to his voice.
Something I’ve noticed since the first debate is the soft, wavering quality to his voice. Now, the human voice is a pretty complicated instrument, with a lot of different physical structures influencing the final product. This is why it is often easy to recognize individual people by voice. And according to various scholarly studies, it is generally also easy for people to guess a speaker’s age and sex based on voice alone. A lot of it has to do with F0, which is the fundamental frequency of a voice. This interesting article talks about the average frequency of male, female, and child voices, for example.
But back to McCain. More than anything he reminds me of two other people: one is a ninety-year-old retired professor who often calls me when he can’t figure out what his computer or printer is doing. And the other is Grandpa Simpson. All three speak with a wavering, higher-pitched tone that I can’t help but associate with the feeble befuddlement of extreme old age. (According to that interesting article I cited in the previous paragraph, what I’m hearing is variation in F0 that exceeds the norm.) McCain’s voice gave me this impression especially strongly in the second debate, when he was trying to play all nice-nice in the town hall setting with the “my friends” stuff. When he went for that softer, less belligerent tone, it projected even more of the confused-old-guy vibe. Never mind his policy proposals; I think that he’s also kind of screwed because of his voice. His aggressive tone, which we heard plenty of last night, comes off as whiny and crotchety, and his softer tone suggests that he needs us to help him find his glasses.
I think the quality of a person’s voice is one of those things that actually has a strong influence on other people’s impressions, on a subconscious level. It’s probably one of the reasons why Palin was such an effective injection of energy for McCain’s campaign, since she could probably outshout a football stadium full of people. Strength of voice is clearly an indicator of age, and with that comes an impression of a person’s vitality. And it’s yet another reason why McCain bugs the crap out of me.
But back to McCain. More than anything he reminds me of two other people: one is a ninety-year-old retired professor who often calls me when he can’t figure out what his computer or printer is doing. And the other is Grandpa Simpson. All three speak with a wavering, higher-pitched tone that I can’t help but associate with the feeble befuddlement of extreme old age. (According to that interesting article I cited in the previous paragraph, what I’m hearing is variation in F0 that exceeds the norm.) McCain’s voice gave me this impression especially strongly in the second debate, when he was trying to play all nice-nice in the town hall setting with the “my friends” stuff. When he went for that softer, less belligerent tone, it projected even more of the confused-old-guy vibe. Never mind his policy proposals; I think that he’s also kind of screwed because of his voice. His aggressive tone, which we heard plenty of last night, comes off as whiny and crotchety, and his softer tone suggests that he needs us to help him find his glasses.
I think the quality of a person’s voice is one of those things that actually has a strong influence on other people’s impressions, on a subconscious level. It’s probably one of the reasons why Palin was such an effective injection of energy for McCain’s campaign, since she could probably outshout a football stadium full of people. Strength of voice is clearly an indicator of age, and with that comes an impression of a person’s vitality. And it’s yet another reason why McCain bugs the crap out of me.
