Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T07:54:18.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Falsetto voice and observational logic: Motivated meanings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2013

Brian Stross*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Anthropology, 1 University Station, #C3200, Austin, TX 78712, USAbstross@mail.utexas.edu

Abstract

Examples of falsetto and higher pitched modal voice are presented in which the meanings are linked iconically and/or indexically to the signs, and therefore nonarbitrarily. Nine such meaning types are identified and discussed as inferences about falsetto derivable from observations that are minimally informed by cultural traditions. Observational knowledge and the logic by which it is utilized are seen as central concepts mediating universals and relativist approaches to the social meanings of voice qualities, including falsetto, and it is proposed that most falsetto use can be placed within the nine functional meaning categories identified. (Voice quality, falsetto, iconicity, indexicality, observational logic, universals, relativity)*

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anonymous (1938). Mystic rites of West Africa revealed to Harvard scientist. The Science News-letter 33(1):56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anttila, Raimo (1972). An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Asher, Ronald E., & Simpson, J. M. Y. (eds.) (1994). The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, vol. 8. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella (2004). The Mapuche man who became a woman shaman: Selfhood, gender transgression, and competing norms. American Ethnologist 31:440–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Harold R. (1987). Frequency code: Orafacial correlates of fundamental frequency. Phonetica 44:173–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blount, Ben G. (1972). Aspects of Luo socialization. Language in Society 1:235–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight (1978). Intonation across languages. In Greenberg, Joseph (ed.), Universals of human language, vol. 2: Phonology, 471524. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, Pascal (2009). Cognitive predispositions and cultural transmission. In Boyer, Pascal & Wertsch, James V. (eds.), Memory in mind and culture, 288319. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope (1998). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In Coates, Jennifer (ed.), Language and gender: A reader, 8199. Madden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, & Levinson, Stephen (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel (2009). Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 138:351–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel, & Boroditsky, Lera (2008). Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition 106:579–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clancy, Patricia (1989). Form and function in the acquisition of Korean wh-questions. Journal of child language 16:323–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dargan, Amanda, & Zeitlin, Steven (1983). American talkers: Expressive styles and occupational choice. Journal of American Folklore 96:333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12:453–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nick J. (2000). The theory of cultural logic. Cultural Dynamics 12:3564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Charles A. (1964). Baby talk in six languages. In Gumperz & Hymes, 103–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furbee, Louanna (1988). To ask one holy thing: Petition as a Tojolabal speech genre. In Brody, Jill & Thomas, John S. (eds.), The Tojolabal Maya: Ethnographic and linguistic approaches, 3953. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University.Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. (2005). Embodiment and cognitive science. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Howard; Taylor;, Donald & Bourhis, Richard (1973). Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through language: some Canadian data. Language in Society 2:177–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Grimes, Joseph E. (1955). Style in Huichol structure. Language 31:3135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J., & Hymes, Dell H. (eds.) (1964). The ethnography of communication. Special issue of the American Anthropologist 66(6).Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J., & Levinson, Stephen C. (1996). Rethinking linguistic relativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos (1999). Discreteness and gradience in intonational contrasts. Language and Speech 42(23): 283305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guthrie, R. Dale (1976). Body hot spots. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell H. (1962). The ethnography of speaking. In Gladwin, Thomas & Sturtevant, William C. (eds.), Anthropology and human behavior, 1353. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell H. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra M. (2009). Indeterminacy and regularization: A process-based approach to the study of sociolinguistic variation and language ideologies. Sociolinguistic Studies 3(2):229–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Cecelia F. (2001). Gender in pre-Hispanic America. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.Google Scholar
Kreiman, Jody, & van Lancker Sidtis, Diana (2011). Foundations of voice studies: An interdisciplinary approach to voice production and perception. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George, & Johnson, Mark (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Laughlin, Robert M. (1975). The Great Tzotzil dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán. Washinton, DC: Smithsonial Institution Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, John (1980). The phonetic description of voice quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Laver, John (1994). Principles of phonetics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loman, Bengt (1975). Prosodic patterns in a Negro American dialect. In Ringbom, Håkan, Ingberg, Alfhild, Norrman, Ralf, Nyholm, Kurt, Westman, Rolf, & Wikberg, Kay, Style and text: Studies presented to Nils Erik Enkvist, 219–42. Stockholm, Sweden: Språkförlaget Skriptor AB.Google Scholar
Lumholtz, Carl (1902/1973). Unknown Mexico. Glorietta, NM: The Rio Grande Press.Google Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, Norma (2008). Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merritt, Dustin J.; Casasanto;, Daniel & Brannon, Elizabeth M (2010). Do monkeys think in metaphors? Representations of space and time in monkeys and humans. Cognition 117:191202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nielsen, Rasmus (2009). “I ain't never been charged with nothing!” The use of falsetto speech as a linguistic strategy of indignation. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 15:108–19.Google Scholar
Nöth, Winfried (1995). Handbook of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J. (1984). An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice. Phonetica 41:116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ohala, John J. (1994). The frequency code underlies the sound symbolic use of voice pitch. In Hinton, Leanne, Nichols, Johanna, & Ohala, John J. (eds.), Sound symbolism, 325–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Persons, Janet A. (1997). High pitch as a mark of respect in Lachixío Zapotec. Working Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics 41:5960.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J. (2007). Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11:478504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rostas, Susanna (1999). A grass roots view of religious change amongst women in an Indigenous community in Chiapas, Mexico. Bulletin of Latin American Research 18(3):327–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandstrom, Alan (1991). Corn is our blood: Culture and ethnic identity in a contemporary Aztec Indian village. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Selby, Henry (1974). Zapotec deviance. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Shayan, Shakila; Ozturk;, Ozge & Sicoli, Mark A (2011). The thickness of pitch: Crossmodal metaphors in Farsi, Turkish, and Zapotec. Senses and Society 6(1):96105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sicoli, Mark A. (2007). Tono: A linguistic ethnography of tone and voice in a Zapotec region (Mexico). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan dissertation.Google Scholar
Sicoli, Mark A. (2010). Shifting voices with participant roles: Voice qualities and speech registers in Mesoamerica. Language in Society 39:521–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23:193229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stross, Brian (1974). Speaking of speaking: Tenejapa Tzeltal metalinguistics. In Bauman, Richard and Sherzer, Joel (eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, 213–39. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Eric R. (2007). Phonological and phonetic characteristics of African American vernacular English. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(5):450–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, Colin (1982). The ritualization of potential conflict between the sexes among the Mbuti. In Leacock, Eleanor & Lee, Richard B. (eds.), Politics and history in band societies, 1356. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Urban, Greg (1988). Ritual wailing in Amerindian Brazil. American Anthropologist 90:385400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urton, Gary (1985). Animal metaphors and the life cycle in an Andean community. In Urton, Gary (ed.), Animal myths and metaphors in South America, 270–72. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
West, Candace (2011). When the doctor is a “lady”: Power, status and gender in physician-patient encounters. In Coates, Jennifer (ed.), Language and gender: A reader, 2nd edn., 468–82. Madden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar