The Voiceless 2

[Janie Mccorey]

Inlinguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation.

Sonorants are sounds such as vowels and nasals that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japanese word sukiyaki is pronounced [sɯ̥kijaki] and may sound like [skijaki] to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen to compress for the [ɯ̥]. Something similar happens in English words like peculiar [pʰə̥ˈkj̊uːliɚ] and potato [pʰə̥ˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯].

Voiceless vowels are also an areal feature in languages of the American Southwest (like Hopi and Keres), the Great Basin (including all Numic languages), and the Great Plains, where they are present in Numic Comanche but also in Algonquian Cheyenne, and the Caddoan language Arikara. It also occurs in Woleaian, in contrast to the other Micronesian languages, which instead delete it outright.

Many languages lack a distinction between voiced and voiceless obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives). This is the case in nearly all Australian languages, and is widespread elsewhere, for example in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Danish, Estonian and the Polynesian languages.

In many such languages, obstruents are realized as voiced in voiced environments, such as between vowels or between a vowel and a nasal, and voiceless elsewhere, such as at the beginning or end of the word or next to another obstruent. That is the case in Dravidian and Australian languages and in Korean but not in Mandarin or Polynesian. Usually, the variable sounds are transcribed with the voiceless IPA letters, but for Australian languages, the letters for voiced consonants are often used.

It appears that voicelessness is not a single phenomenon in such languages. In some, such as the Polynesian languages, the vocal folds are required to actively open to allow an unimpeded (silent) airstream, which is sometimes called a breathed phonation (not to be confused with breathy voice). In others, such as many Australian languages, voicing ceases during the hold of a stop (few Australian languages have any other kind of obstruent) because airflow is insufficient to sustain it, and if the vocal folds open, that is only from passive relaxation.

Thus, Polynesian stops are reported to be held for longer than Australian stops and are seldom voiced, but Australian stops are prone to having voiced variants (L&M 1996:53), and the languages are often represented as having no phonemically voiceless consonants at all.

In Southeast Asia, when stops occur at the end of a word, they are voiceless because the glottis is closed, not open, so they are said to be unphonated (have no phonation) by some phoneticians, who considered "breathed" voicelessness to be a phonation.[2]

Giving voice to the voiceless is sometimes more a clich than an ethical cornerstone of journalism. You can read through whole editions of most newspapers or magazines, or watch a full network or local newscast, without finding anything that would qualify.

And that is hard, not only for journalists, but also for our subjects: An undocumented worker may fear that an interview will lead to deportation; a worker unemployed for months may be embarrassed to talk publicly. Hegarty told me her story only after listening to me interview her friend, who had also had an abortion.

After exchanging messages with Hegarty, I decided I needed to hear the voice again, to update it and perhaps amplify it one more time. She hinted that she had stories to share from the past two decades. I was planning a trip to the Midwest in February, and I added a stop in Omaha.

But first some background. In 1993, when I became a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald, the paper was covering abortion on an ad-hoc basis: a cops reporter covering a protest, a political reporter covering legislative efforts to restrict abortion, a courts reporter covering challenges to legislation. The editors wanted one reporter covering all abortion stories, and it became part of my job. It was a busy time for abortion-related news in Nebraska and Iowa, and I wrote a lot about the protests and the politics, developing strong relationships with key figures on both sides of the issue.

We agreed that I would let the women decide after their interviews whether I could use their names. Few, if any, would agree in advance to talk on the record about such an intimate, divisive issue. But I wanted to hear their voices, spend an hour or two listening, and take a shot at earning their trust. I had to interview 11 women to find the six who made it into the story, but the five who decided not to let me use their names helped me understand the issue better and win the trust of the six who did.

As Hegarty moved on with her life after the 1996 interview, I did, too. I left reporting behind and spent much of my time training journalists and planning digital strategy for my employers. I started a blog about journalism, The Buttry Diary. I write frequently about confidential sources and occasionally I post old stories on my blog, noting journalism lessons learned, and sometimes noting how I might approach the story differently today using social media and other digital tools.

In December 2013, I posted the story I had written about Hegarty in 1996, interspersed with a discussion of how I got women to talk on the record. Though my sources had agreed to publication of their names 17 years earlier, that was before the World-Herald published stories online. It was before Google made stories easily searchable for years after publication. The women had agreed to an uncomfortable week or two before my story became old news and most of the people who might have disagreed with their decisions moved on to other matters. So I used only their initials in my 2013 post about updated lessons from the story (I explained my decision in the text).

My final task, I learned through the process, was not to be the voice of the women in telling their stories, but to support them in telling their own. In the end, I realized that the power and nuance of our stories is best captured when told in our own voices.

However, before we take on that mission of being voices for the voiceless, we should ask ourselves: Why? Why is it necessary for me to speak on behalf of these people? What do I have that they don't? What makes me qualified to tell their stories and be their voices? Why aren't they present to tell their own stories?

To have a voice is to have power. This is something that we understand intuitively. Power shapes our everyday reality, both internally in our perceptions and externally in the world. It is something that we embrace without realizing we are embracing it, and it is something to which we cling dearly, consciously or not, because to be without it is to be ignored and be invisible.

By affirming the position of being a voice for the voiceless, we are reaffirming and propagating structures that say certain voices, certain lives, are valued over others. As we cling to this belief and practice, we reinforced our status and affirm and reaffirm voicelessness.

In order to truly change the lives of those considered "voiceless," we need to fundamentally let go of the idea and the practice by systematically challenging the concept of voicelessness. We must accept that everyone has a voice, and then we must work to support environments in which all of our voices can be used and heard.

If you have felt compelled by the mission to be the voice for the voiceless, it is not so easy to simply let go of the idea. However, doing so is necessary if we are to to find real solutions to the problem of voicelessness.

As we refocus our efforts and start working instead on ways to ensure that all voices are heard and begin creating new realities and new possibilities, the payoff will be immense. Once we change the lens through which we view poverty, and once we fix the foundation upon which the class of voicelessness is created, we will be able to build sustainable solutions.

[g], on the other hand, is a voiced stop, where voicing actuallystarts during the closure. So, the tongue moves up to the velum, thevocal folds begin vibrating, and then, when the stop is released, thevowel begins immediately. The voice onset time is negative, as thevoicing started before the closure. See yet another waveform diagrambelow, this time showing /ga/:

So, we have three stop choices: Voiced stops, voiceless unaspiratedstops, and voiceless aspirated stops, which are all used differently inthe different languages of the world. But how does this affect JimiHendrix?

So, next time you find yourself listening to Purple Haze, Thank JimiHendrix for providing one of the best examples of the perceptualtroubles which can come from our lack of a voiced/voiceless-unaspiratedcontrast in the English language. Or, curse me for linguisticallycorrupting an otherwise good song. Either or, really.

Bible Verse: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Matthew 25:35-36

When we serve others in this way, we are in fact serving and worshipping Jesus. When we care and speak up for the voiceless and downtrodden, we are worshipping our God who cares so deeply about those same people.

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Objective: To assess the effectiveness of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) strategies to enable people who are temporarily voiceless due to medical intervention, to communicate.

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