Tag: tones of voice

Phones

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
It’s harder to hear tone of voice over the telephone. Phone lines convey what the phone company thinks is the minimum information needed to understand speech. It doesn’t convey music well, apparently. It’s not very good for people speaking a language they’re not very fluent in. I have trouble recognizing whose voice it is or even sometimes whether it’s a man or a woman; this can be embarassing. It’s not lying to say “I can’t hear tone of voice very well over this phone connection.”
That makes a lot of sense.

Using books for actors to learn nonverbal communication?

Real Social Skills
tor-without-an-h asked:
 
There are many books written for actors that talk about how to convey emotion through tone, facial expressions, and body language. Although they tend to be over-exaggerated, I’ve found them to be helpful because they point out common social cues that non-neurotypical people don’t always learn otherwise. Some books even mention how social cues vary between cultures.
 
I’ve heard those can be useful. Do you know any specific books that are good?
 
A comment from Mel Baggs:
 
I’m generally really uncomfortable with acting-based “social skills” because a lot of what people are looking at is stage conventions, not natural emotions. Then to some people stage conventions start to look more realistic than real emotions. I hate it. (Especially since I often get the short end of the stick in such situations. I’m 100% real, but I’m rarely a stage convention. And I’ve been penalized for that.)
 
That makes a lot of sense.

I’m not really familiar with acting at all. It seems plausible to me that some people could learn some things from it, but I could see how it could be really dangerous to put too much trust in it.