Voice and Class: Why Workers So Often Speak with a Raised, Strained Voice Instead of a Voice Supported from the Lower Abdomen

There are plenty of techniques on social media for making your voice sound better: practicing abdominal breathing, speaking with support from the lower abdomen, chest resonance, panting like a dog, blowing bubbles into water through a straw, and so on. Plenty of people also teach you to speak slowly, steadily, and sparingly.

In fact, when ordinary people habitually speak with a raised, strained voice in daily life rather than a voice supported from the lower abdomen, it is usually not because they do not know how. It has to do with power, rather than physiology.

1. Status and Roles

Speaking with a raised, strained voice is a posture of submission from a subordinate position. When dealing with superiors and others—clients, difficult people you still have to win over, and so on—you lean your upper body forward, raise your shoulders, tighten and raise your voice, and speak quickly and eagerly. You convey nervousness, urgency, and concern in order to please, signal submission, and accommodate them. This often comes with lots of unnecessary, repeatedly uttered filler: “Right, right, right,” “Yes, yes, yes.”

If you speak in a relaxed, low, slow voice supported from the lower abdomen, people may feel that you have too much agency, too strong a sense of yourself, and may instead see you as putting on airs. Unless the other person likes you.

Many bosses and leaders deliberately use a slow, low, powerful voice supported from the lower abdomen to project authority. “People of high standing speak unhurriedly”: controlling the pace of a conversation is a power held by the stronger party.

Try these two tones: a. Say quickly, with a raised, strained voice, “Mr. Wang, this is just a small token of appreciation.” b. Say slowly, in a voice supported from the lower abdomen, “Mr. Wang, this is just a small token of appreciation.”

1. Voice and Relationships

In their families of origin, many people get used to speaking in a pleasing, raised, strained voice. They cannot speak in a relaxed, natural, unhurried way. This, too, reflects the underlying nature of their family relationships. Many people also use a raised, strained voice to coax and soothe their romantic partners, which likewise reflects an unhealthy relationship. Often, this is a CPTSD stress response.

1. Agency

For ordinary people, the key to moving from habitually speaking with a raised, strained voice to a relaxed, resonant, natural voice supported from the lower abdomen is to strengthen their agency: to feel at ease, confident, and composed; to stop pleasing and accommodating others; and to distance themselves from environments and people that make them constrict their voice, and from environments and people that objectify them. This is a typical case of drawing close to what helps you flourish and keeping your distance from what undermines you. Develop the positive aspects of your own studies, career, and social relationships.

Be strict about whom you let into your life, and lenient with yourself.