In Why Do People Sing? Paddy Scannell explores some of the mysteries at the heart of vocal communication. What explains the communicative musicality of the voices between parent and child as a baby learns to talk? Can readers of fiction hear the voices of authors and characters within soundless written texts? How has radioaffected voice, talk, music, and singing, and how has it made them public in new ways? And by putting the voice into recordings, to what extent have broadcastingtechnologies provided a radically new resource for historians? These questions andmore are explored in the first three chapters. In the final chapter, Scannell boldly putsinto words the inexpressible experience of listening to singing, wherein the glory of thehuman voice finds its purest expression.
This highly original book makes a distinctive intervention by stressing the inherentlypositive qualities of talk (rather than language) as the basis for communication.Concise and beautifully written, it is suitable for students and scholars of media,communication, and other disciplines across the humanities, as well as general readerswith an interest in this fascinating topic.
