Culturally Speaking: The Rhetoric of Voice and Identity in a Mediated Culture (Intersectional Rhetorics) - Hardcover

Edgar, Amanda Nell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814214061 ISBN 13: 9780814214060

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Winner, 2020 Outstanding Book Award, Critical/Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association

Recent pieces by NPR, the BBC, and Forbes have called attention to the power of voice-positing that "your voice is the secret to getting hired" and that "voice can accelerate or hold back a career." While it has become clearer that such things as pitch and intonation can be tied to assumptions about one's gender, race/ethnicity, and class, studying voice as a socially constructed artifact carries with it unique challenges. In response, Culturally Speaking: The Rhetoric of Voice and Identity in a Mediated Culture presents an innovative approach to studying the spoken voice in media, showing how racial and gendered oppression bubble beneath the surface of American culture's most recognized speaking voices, spreading invisible messages about which kinds of vocal identities are privileged and which kinds should be silenced.
 
Through her analysis of prominent voices in American culture-including Morgan Freeman, Tina Fey, Barack Obama, Adele, Dave Chappelle, Richard Pryor, and George Lopez-Amanda Nell Edgar argues that voices carry a residue of the particular cultural environments in which they are formed, and that these environments can be traced and analyzed to add a sonic dimension to our understanding of race and gender as rhetorically situated identities-pushing back against the often-unnoticed systems of sound-based discrimination.

About this title

About the Author

Amanda Nell Edgar is Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis and coauthor of The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814214061
• ISBN 13: 9780814214060
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224