Selecting a Voice for a Specified Task: the Example of Telephone Announcements

Abstract

There has been a considerable degree of interest in speech style as an indicator of various attributes of the speaker. This paper reports an investigation into which attributes would be considered most important by a panel of judges asked to assess various voices for the task of making telephone announcements. The results showed that it was possible to arrive at a model describing the basis of selection, and that model is presented here together with a discussion of some of its implications. However, the analysis indicated that there are other variables that would need to be investigated before a full understanding of the vocal attributes required of a telephone announcer could be obtained.