The Sounds People Make
My son Charlie is verbal, minimally. His sentences often consist of two words maximum, as many as five to seven (”I want eat brown noodles yes!”); he can say all the sounds of English, but cannot always articulate them clearly. Many of the sounds that Charlie uses are not exactly words, like his hums or streams of vowels and consonants that recalls the beeps and clicks and whirrs of some machine from his memory, perhaps. When we are out in public—-in lower Manhattan yesterday, for instance—people always notice Charlie. I have been wondering if this has something to do with how Charlie looks—something about the set of his features, his very big brown eyes—and/or also something to do with what he says, or does not seem to.
These first sentences of “The Gender of Sound” in Glass, Irony and God (1992) by Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson speak to how we (humans) tend to equate the sounds we make with who the person making them is:
It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God. These judgements happen fast and can be brutal. Aristotle tells us that the highpitched voice of the female is one evidence of her evil disposition, for creatures who are brave or just (like lions, bulls, roosters and the human male) have large deep voices [Physiognomics 807a]. (p. 119)
I would have to add, smart or stupid, normal or different, strange or unstrange, to Carson’s list of the “sounds people make” and according to which we judge them as human, or less than human, or not at all.
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POSTED IN: Animals, Language, Philosophy, Stereotypes
8 opinions for The Sounds People Make
mcewen
Jan 14, 2007 at 8:42 pm
When we’re at home I don’t notice them. When we’re out, that’s when I notice the ‘happy tick noise/concentrating tick noise / overwhelmed tick noise’ [s] but I only notice them because other people notice them.
You can tell that they notice them because crowds part, people disperse and we’re effectively in our own family bubble.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 14, 2007 at 10:05 pm
That’s the same with us—-I’m so used to “Charlese” at home and then it sounds more distict once we are out (in a bubble of 2 sometimes…..).
natalia
Jan 14, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I think this video really applies to this post, so I wanted to tell you guys about it:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc
Ballastexistenz
Jan 14, 2007 at 11:02 pm
I make a very unusual noise, particularly when I’m overloaded. I’ve never noticed whether it draws attention (I’m really bad at noticing things like that), but I wouldn’t be shocked if it does.
Julia
Jan 14, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Sam has his “happy noises” and his “unhappy noises”. Unhappy noises require attention ASAP. (Kinda hard to do on the way home from school sometimes, but as soon as we’re home, he has my undivided attention while I figure out what it is he needs.) When he’s making happy noises, we try not to be too intrusive, but sometimes he welcomes our company. (Sometimes he demands company! Other times, he just wants to be left alone in his happy space.)
And sometimes he’ll laugh at a joke only he knows about. One time when he did it in the grocery store, an older woman came up to me and said, “He hears the angels.” Maybe not, but it was a kinder reaction than some we’ve gotten for various odd actions. (He’s not the only one to just laugh for no apparent reason, either, his siblings do it as well — it’s a lot nicer for anyone else around than screaming, which usually has a cause that can be determined if you’re determined enough to figure it out.)
Julia
Jan 15, 2007 at 12:17 am
And then there are the sounds that 3-year-old twins who share a bedroom make when they should be asleep but haven’t figured out that making that kind of noise after bedtime will bring down a parental lecture! (Maybe they like the attention….)
My younger son is particularly fond of screaming when he’s excited, which really isn’t good when his sister isn’t feeling well. (I don’t like talking about “indoor voices” but we may have to go there….)
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 15, 2007 at 12:36 am
What I’ve been learning to listen to more and more in Charlie’s noises is not the sounds but the tune. Sometimes it’s a song, sometimes a sequence of noises like for the garage door opener.
Lisa/Jedi
Jan 15, 2007 at 11:18 am
Brendan definitely has happy sounds & unhappy ones, so that we can tell if he’s doing allright upstairs when we’re down. He sings a lot when he’s happy, often it’s a song they’re singing at school for music or something we’ve been singing as a family. Brendan really likes to make up games with a “sound-component” (such as “guess the sound effect”) from our favourite anime. H’e really good at reproducing these sounds. The unhappy noises have settled into foul language (sigh) which we’re trying to modify into more socially-acceptable forms (such as saying the “s” word in japanese rather than in english…). Brendan’s tics also have a strong verbal/aural component- loud exploding noises, hissing noises, & the like. At this moment he’s clucking like a chicken in response to a chicken character in a game :) Out in public it’s mostly the tics that call attention to him, since he’s usually in a state of discomfort out there.
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