A Making It Personal 191
it was also likely the first instrument of torture. Even a pre-human
ancestor without a spoken verbal language probably got this point
across with a shriek or grunt.
Stress causes a rise in vocal pitch. A stressed person will have
clipped tones and a strained sound to the voice. Add a bit of heavy
emotion—sorrow, anger, joy, uncertainty—and the vocal chords
themselves respond similar to the strings of a musical instrument.
Without any choice, the vocal has sold out to the highest bidder
leaving the will to fend for itself with simple words.
Try this with your dog, cat, horse, or any other animal that
responds to your voice: Tell her how much you love her in a gruff,
angry tone of voice. How did she respond? Now tell her you are
dumping her at the pound and use a happy baby-talk voice. How
did she respond? People respond similarly. You sound loving, so you
can’t possibly want to beat me up.
I once worked with a SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance
Escape) class for pilots. My partner for the interrogations was a
tremendous Arabic linguist, so we interrogated one of the pilots in
Arabic. As all good English speakers do, the pilot tried hard to com-
municate and struggled to find a word he recognized as we kindly
and politely bantered with him about what a murderous bastard he
must be. He tried again and again, and finally seized a false cog-
nate from Arabic to English. We asked, “what is your name?” (In
Arabic, “Esmuk eh?”) Thinking that it sounded similar to “Smokey?”
he made a universal symbol for smoking. We then moved to a much
larger than normal condom he was carrying and asked him “Why?”
in Arabic. Military people keep condoms on them to carry water,
and he responded by trying to mime this. He started by holding both