Conversation, voice, and identity

Voice is a powerful social cue. Upon hearing a speaker’s voice, accent, or manner of speaking, hearing interlocutors may form spontaneous impressions about various speaker characteristics, e.g., concerning their age, competence, place of origin, personality trait (e.g., Schweinberger et al. 2014; Baus et al. 2019; Jiang et al. 2019).

 Interlocutors can draw on information provided by some such impressions in conversation. In this talk, I will first discuss cases where impressions based on the speaker’s voice have an affective-like nature and involve positive or negative valence. Next, drawing on specific examples, I will argue that some of the interlocutors’ reactions based on their impressions of the speaker can have important downstream effects by providing feedback for building the speaker’s self-image and identity. I will close by connecting these results with the literature on linguistic anxiety and insecurity.