Men's Vocal Behaviour and the Construction of Self

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The following paper considers the role of vocal behaviour in the construction of Self. It examines evidence from an ongoing research project investigating the nature and function of singing in men's everyday lives. The present article looks at how men create and regulate identity through singing and through the construction of personal narratives about their vocal behaviour. Extensive, informal, vocal-history interviews were carried out with eight men who all sing in a male-voice choir in north-east Iceland. Additionally these men and sixteen others who sing in the same choir, kept one-week vocal diaries, making regular descriptive and reflective entries about their own vocal activity. Using the methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study explores personal perceptions of vocal behaviour. Emerging themes suggest that singing is seen by these men as a central concept of Self. Furthermore, these themes appear to correspond closely to the psychological theory proposed by Robert Weber in his recent revision of William James's seminal, triadic model of Self. Data are discussed here in relation to this particular theoretical framework. Men's vocal behaviour appears to be an important technology of Self; that is, a forming agent and defining concept in tripartite elements of body, persona and spirit. Findings illustrate singing's agency in the changing Self and in the maintaining of core and unitary Selfs, and they exemplify ways in which personal identities can be vocally-constructed, performed and celebrated.

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