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Volume 2 Number 1
Fall 2007
| Voice,
Vitality and Meaning: On the Shaping of the Infant's Utterances in
Willing Engagement with Culture. Comment on Bertau's “On the Notion of
Voice” Maya Gratier Université Paris X - Nanterre, France Colwyn Trevarthen University of Edinburgh, UK |
pp. 169-181 |
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| ABSTRACT. The
newborn human voice communicates, and a foetus learns the sound
patterns of the mother's voice transmitted through her body. It is our
nature to vocalise, to perceive others' vocalisations, and to learn
from their messages. Bertau reviews a rich literature on the social
voice and its cultivation, how projects different ways of being, and
acquires different personal narrative histories through dialogic
transactions in the community. In responding, we propose that the life
of the voice cannot be separated from the rhythm of human life time,
the 'musicality' of moving in company. Infant vocal and gestural games
seek affectionate 'holding' from known others and to share adventures
of experience in companionship. The mother, influenced by her special
intimacy with the baby, becomes a person with several voices, and how
she adapts this poly-voicedness indicates her emotional health and the
quality of her relationship with her baby, her home and society. The
baby too, as it grows in playfulness and self-consciousness, 'becomes'
different voices. In a family, a theatre of 'voice persons' is created,
which leads the child participate in the living chorus of voices in the
community of work and recreation, with its rituals of activity and
habits of talk. |
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