0132 – Diction For Communication

0132 – Diction For Communication Diction for communicationTimes and expectations change, so exacting and over-clear clarity of every single syllable is usually unnecessary. It can make you sound at best old-fashioned and at worst pedantically petulant. Heck, even the Queen has changed how she speaks![1],[2] So even though there are few calls nowadays for a cut-glass pronunciation such as Celia Johnson in the 1945 film “Brief Encounter”[3], appropriate diction is still important for successful communication. How often do you hear of “N/A chess”, “hoe-moaners” and “pea-stalks”?[4] What about when the amount of money spent on the London Underground is cut and we are told that the “investment on the chewb has been re-juiced”? And what day comes after Monday? Is it, as you often hear, “Choose-day”?  Some people may insist that you pronounce a word ‘super-correctly’ but it’ll be up to you or a studio director or producer to decide whether you have been sloppy or simply moved with the times if you say “FEB-you-ree” rather than “FEB-roo-arry”. I’d personally go with the former, although I do wince when I hear “kloze” for “clothes” and “nooz” for “nyooze”. It’s also the case that some people don’t fully pronounce the k in “asked” so rather than “arse-k-t” it comes out more as “arsed”!== [1] https://www.english.com/blog/queens-english/  [2] A fascinating article on how American English has altered since WW2, especially amongst broadcasters: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/that-weirdo-announcer-voice-accent-where-it-came-from-and-why-it-went-away/395141/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E79g3robJWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oEw--3QdXM [4] If you haven’t worked them out, they are ‘NHS’, ‘home-owners’ and peace talks’ – but you would be forgiven for not understanding given the way some people talk..!==Through these under-5-minute episodes, you can build your confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career spent in TV and radio studios.And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.Look out for more details of the book during 2021.Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts, travel news presenters and voice-over artists.He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of “Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper “Ariel”.Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows, ‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly 2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects. Music credits:"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  "Beauty Flow" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  "Envision" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4706-envision License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Limit 70" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5710-limit-70 License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Rising Tide" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5027-rising-tide License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license "Wholesome" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5050-wholesomeLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Hosted on Acast. 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