Slurring, stuttering and the 'falling ending'
Slurring can be observed in daily conversation. There is difficulty expressing certain sounds or words.
Words are clipped, or not fully pronounced or incompleted.
Sloppy enunciation in an actor.
| Check there is not a mechanical cause - as poorly fitting dentures. |
| Slurring is a BIG DANGER in radio acting. It has a number of causes, as a speaker in life, and as an actor. |
| Most of us slur in ordinary speech, and some individuals more than others. Sometimes, younger people slur as a feature of their sub-culture. This is partly about 'locking out' adults from the language of the young, and about 'locking in' friends. |
| Slurring as an actor - due to (1) not thinking through the meaning of each phrase, (2) not carrying through vocal energy through to the end of the phrase or the sentence, and (3) not carrying through the phrasing and meaning right through to the end of the sentence. |
| Watch out for the danger of the FALLING ENDING - the ending of a sentence is lost. |
| Stuttering in everyday speech is a loss of speech fluency . There are intermittent, involuntary interruptions in the flow of speech. |
| People who stutter know what they want to say, but are momentarily unable to say it because of 'disfluencies' (interruptions in the flow of speech). |
| DO NOT include a radio drama character who stutters, with a lot of interruptions to speech. Your listeners will become fed up with this sort of dialogue. This advice is not intended to discriminate, but this type of specialist acting requires a professional actor. It is very rare in radio drama. |
| Start looking for examples of the 'falling ending' in speech. Listen to your friends. Listen out for that person who swallows the end of every sentence and even phrase. You will find them! |
| Listen and observe from films, especially American films. |
| For example, in 'Skulls III', the female lead puts a falling ending into nearly everything she says. It's weird!! |
| It is a way of speaking in real-life talk. And especially in young people. This is sometimes a marker of being young. But NOT ON STAGE! |
| Observe also the 'rising ending'. Each sentence ends on a rising musical note, whether question or statement or anything. This is a feature of Australian speech and of Estuary English in the UK. |
