A Whisper is accomplished when the speaker turns off the voice (no vibration) and reduces the suprasegmental of intensity. Whispering is a form of acoustic highlighting.

(Fickenscher, S., & Gaffney, E. (2016). Auditory verbal strategies to build listening and spoken language skills. Retrieved from http://www.auditory-verbal-mentoring.com/contact/contact.php) *can also be retrieved from this website using the navigation at the top of the page*

You might have read the title and definition above and thought, “Why in the world would I whisper when I am communicating with a person who is deaf or hard of hearing? Wouldn’t that make listening and understanding MORE difficult?”

This thought process makes a lot of sense, and a whisper can be more difficult to perceive, especially when the communication partner does not have consistent or complete access to speech sounds at a normal convethersational level.

Here is how we can harness the power of a whisper and use it purposefully as a teaching tool!

In spoken English, vowel sounds carry the power of speech as well as the prosody (Ling, 1989) and consonant sounds carry the meaning, or intelligibility. Because vowels have more power, they can cause consonant sounds, especially those with less intensity, to be more difficult to hear. By changing the speaker’s voice to a whisper, the power of the vowels is lowered and consonants can be easier to hear. We can describe this process as making consonants more acoustically salient. If you remember your speech acoustics training ( ;) ) you will remember that the whisper will allow the higher frequency speech sounds to be heard more clearly. Practice privately with /s/ and see what you notice!

Remember, whisper is a part of Acoustic Highlighting where instead of the typical increase in volume, we use a decrease in volume. A whisper has a similar affect as other highlighting techniques in that is captures the attention of the listener. It can add an element of surprise or redirect attention to the speaker. A whisper causes the listener to lean in and focus on the spoken message. Repetition might be necessary when the whisper serves as a cue for the child' to listen.

As always, click this link here to download an individual handout for this strategy to share with your clients or other professionals. You can also download the entire ebook by using the link in the navigation at the top of the page!