The question I will like to look into is how the voice used for words gives them a meaning fbeyond their definition, evident when the voice is placed in a social sphere: the social context of the audience and social position of the voice as understood by the audience informs the implications voice has on the words being said. The implications are concerned with that possible effects of the words and the production of a broader meaning around them.

I think this enquiry is important for two reasons:

• Research into this social aspect of voice serves movie creators as a tool to maximizing their control over a message they hope to portray in their movie.
• Situating voice in this social sphere would provide a medium through which the viewer can exercise through experiments about the society they are in: an understanding of the manner in which interpretation of voice and its effecs is contingent on social factors may lead to questions about why a particular interpretation is made, what would have to change in society to create different interpretations, how would the story change if the viewer opened herself to different interpretations of voice? These questions arising from voice in movies can lead the engaged viewer to experiment through the movie. This play of ideas ignited by placing voice in a web of social connections may influence the viewer’s world-view thus possibly affect their action in that world.  

Reasonable, Risky: It was hard to find out why my argument may be riskly since I usually don’t articulate ideas that seem to make no sense to me. I think my argument is reasonable because hearing is just another sensory organ whose information must be made sense of by the brain, and I think that a lot of our understanding is informed through social relations.

It’s risky because it doesn’t accept that a composition of words holds a unalienable concrete truth but instead is alienable and malleable, and their voice, once understood in a social context, produces meaning; and this meaning lies in the recipient, thus it arises from a reaction. If one accepts that meaning lies in the recipient then it is easily understood that the meaning of words is in essence their effect. The idea of word’s meaning being alienable raises questions about ownership and authorship: how does the author claim ownership over words when their essence is not fixed? Are they taking ownership over a single meaning?

Viewing the audience as a producer of meaning goes against the view that voice-over narration spells things out for viewer.

For my first major paper I will probably use Alcoff’s Problem of Speaking for Others and Davis’ Acoustic Cyberspace. Just today I came upon the Comstock and Hocks reading and when I skimmed through it I thought they may have relevant ideas.

 My sound-script: I am not sure of the details but I know I am going to change the voice without changing the content of the original narration; possibly focusing on gender if I can’t find another social issue to relate it to.