When a speech sound which is normally voiced is pronounced without
vibration or only slight vibration, this is called devoicing. Devoicing of voiced
consonants often occurs in English when they are at the end of a word,
e.g. lid is pronounced [li,] where the mark ‘n’ under the /d/ means devoicing.
see also international phonetic alphabet, manner of articulation,
place of articulationvoice^3 n
in writing, the self-representation or positioning that a writer presents in a
text. Voice may be reflected in the writer’s way of representing the world, in
the writer’s relative tentativeness or authority in terms of his or her relation-
ship with the reader, and in the writer’s preferred way of turning meaning
into text.
see also audience
voice onset time n
also VOT
when pronouncing stops, such as /p/, /b/ in pin,bin, the two articulators
(i.e. the lips) are closed and then opened again. With /b/ the vocal cords
are vibrating to produce a voiced stop (see voice^2 ). The voice onset time is
a relationship between these two factors. It is the point in time at which the
voicing starts in relation to the opening of the two articulators. For example,
the voice onset time for French, Spanish and Thai /b/ is generally earlier than
that for English /b/.
voice-over n
commentary spoken by an unseen narrator, for example in films, television
programmes, and commercials.
voice quality n
the overall impression that a listener obtains of a speaker’s voice. It is also
sometimes called timbre, and refers to those characteristics of a particular
voice that enable the listener to distinguish one voice from another, such as
when a person is able to identify a telephone caller. Voice quality is known to
be influenced by many factors, including, gender, age, anatomy (e.g. height,
weight, muscularity, geometry of the laryngeal structures, respiratory
volume), emotional states (e.g. fear, anger, sexual arousal), and state of
health (e.g. laryngitis, emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, intoxication), as
well as by the habitual adjustments made by individual persons of the vocal
tract (resulting, for example, in “harsh”, “whispery”, or “creaky” voice),
and also by the characteristic articulatory setting associated with a
specific language, dialect, or social variety of a particular language.
voice quality