Den talande bokens poetik - Doria

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The DAISY revolution also helped the development of the commercial audio
book, which has become very popular in the beginning of the 2000s. A “talking
book” is a non-commercial recording of a book and can only be borrowed in
special libraries by people with diagnosed reading disabilities. An “audio book”,
on the other hand, is a commercial recording and can be bought by anybody who
prefers to listen to a book rather than to read it visually. The audio book has
revolutionized reading culture in contemporary time, as discussed by Paul Du
Gay et al. (1997), Deborah Philips (2007) and Rebecca Fenton (2009).
Chapter 2 also discusses perspectives on voice and communication. The
prosodic elements - tempo, pausing, quantity, intensity, tonality and timbre -
influence the impression that a person gets from another person’s voice
(Engström & Stürmer 1970) and can thus also influence the interpretation made
from listening to an orally performed text. Early studies on vocal communication
(Allport & Cantril 1934; Fay & Middelton 1939; Pear 1931) showed that it is
very hard to separate the impression of a speaker as a person from the
impression of his or her voice. To provide tools for the analysis of research
question 3, the writer of this dissertation reported some earlier studies of how
different listeners defined the prototype of a good and a bad voice in the context
of the Finnish culture of speaking. Maarit Valo (1994), who did some research
about how a good voice was defined in the context of listening to radio, found
that the listeners preferred a male voice rather than a female one. They also liked
a voice that was distinct and clear but melodic: the speaking tempo should be
quite slow but fluent and the voice should not have any voice problems. Kristin
Furu (2004) asked trainee teachers about their opinions of a good teacher’s
voice. They thought that a good voice is easy to hear, it is clear and enjoyable to
listen to and can capture the pupil’s interest. Listeners tend to agree on the
prototype of a good and poor voice.
In Chapter 3, the various aspects of reading, listening and interpretative reading,
which can be regarded as the most developed form of reading, are discussed.
The chapter begins by looking at reading from a cognitive point of view, and
because the informants in this study read with their ears, “reading” is also
examined from a listening perspective. Some results from early research on
reading comprehension and listening comprehension are presented. This is
especially interesting in relation to the informants in the special group in the
research project in this thesis. Donald Spearritt (1962) from Australia found that
there is a specific factor in the brain for listening comprehension, and Claes
Welwert (1984) from Sweden also found that most school pupils have to be 13
years old before they understand a written text as well as a text that they listen
to. This cognitive level of development corresponds to the level of cognitive
development for people with mild mental retardation (see, for example,
Asmervik et.al. 2001; Bakk & Grunewald 2004; Kylén 1981). These facts speak
in favor of the use of talking books as a way to read fiction for young adults with
the function disability of mild mental retardation.