Last evening on NPR's "Fresh Air," Terry Gross ran an old interview she'd done with Sam Chwat, speech therapist and researcher and "dialect coach to the stars." It was he that taught Robert DeNiro to sound like somebody from Appalachia for a role, rather than someone from New York City. Chwat died recently at 57, from lymphoma.
One of the things he discovered during his researches, though he was certainly not the first, is that facial expression helps convey vocal tone, which means we can hear people smiling on the radio. To document and assess the impact, Chwat created a strange justaposition:
One funny exercise that we have is we have people grin while reading into a tape recorder a bloody, bloody story, a really grotesquely bloody story from a tabloid newspaper and then play it back. It's not even their language. And all they were doing was grinning while they were reading the story and they will sound like the most psychotic thing going as a result on the playback.
I haven't heard any of these recordings, so I'll try making one of my own here at home. Sam Chwat's extremely innovative research technique has enormous possibilities.
Lost Writer "Q"
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