Vocal Cues

What are vocal cues?

These are all of the oral aspects of sound except words themselves. Other words for vocal cues can be simplified as Volume and Tone talked earlier in this blog.

http://blog.lpinnovations.com/Loss-Prevention-Leadership/bid/50962/It-s-Not-Only-What-You-Say-it-s-How-You-Say-It

Vocal cues are often known as paralinguistic features.
This includes the non-word sounds and non-word characteristics of language, such as pitch, volume, rate, and quality. Paralinguistic means "alongside the words or language". 

 The types of vocal cues that include are the following:

• Pitch: This represents the highness or lowness of your voice. Therefore it really depends how high or low you speak. E.g. the level of pitch with the boss is always low, but the level of boss towards its employees is high. 

• Rate: This is to refer how rapidly or slowly you speak. It is very important to maintain an average rate. Fluctuation in rates can be noticeable and often suspicious. It may also mean that you are either under or over confident.

• Inflection: That is the variety or changes in pitch. It is recommended to maintain the same inflection and avoid variations.

• Volume: Defines as the loudness or softness of your voice. We often have soft volume with our loved ones.

• Quality: Refers to the unique resonance of your voice, such as huskiness, nasality, raspiness, or whininess.

• Non-word sounds: This represents to the sound used for effect in speaking, often when making pauses. E.g. mmh, huh, ahh, ehh, dahh,.  

• Pronunciation: This is whether or not you say a word correctly.

• Articulation: This defines to whether or not your mouth, tongue, and teeth coordinate to make a word understandable to others such as Lisp Articulation. E.g. in Tanzania the word "Mother is pronounced as "Mazza" or the word "Sister" as "Sista".

• Enunciation: Refers to whether or not you combine pronunciation and articulation to produce a word with clarity and distinction so that it can be understood. E.g. a person who mumbles has an enunciation problem.

• Silence: This simply defines with the lack of sound.

These vocal cues maybe considered important factors because they are often linked with our mind with a speaker's appearance, characteristics, emotionally, and even credibility.

References:

• Mary E. G., D. L. (n.d.). Business Communication: Process & Product (Fourth Brief Canadian ed.). Nelson Education Ltd.
• Judy C. Pearson, P. E. (n.d.). Fundamentals of Communication Studies (Fourth ed.). The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.