Talk:Tone of voice

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Allistic insights

Not interpreting tonal voice elements is almost impossible for those of us who are neurotypical. We are trained since infancy to expect information (often very important stuff) to be communicated that way. This is even more true about body language.

If one had a way to measure information content flowing through each of three channels (body language, voice tone, and words) between two neurotypical people, one could come up with percentages of the total content. Actual percentages vary from moment to moment, but broad averages might be calculated showing what we do. Attempts have been made at gathering this data and the numbers come out roughly as follows.

Body Language: 55%
Voice Tone: 38%
Words: 7%

The exact numbers aren't important. What I want to point out is how dependent neurotypical people are on everything that isn't 'words'. Most of what we use to provide context to 'words' comes in the other two channels. It's almost 16 to 1. Something simple like "I enjoy eating pizza" means many different things depending on how it is said.

We only use 'just words' if we have no choice, and it causes all sorts of trouble. Sarcasm as a form of humor is almost impossible across the internet because we can't hear it in a speaker's voice tone. There is a reason so many of us are resorting to emoticons.

I've learned from my son to pull back on context assumptions because I know he doesn't know tonal and body languages as well as he does written English, but most neurotypical people aren't trained like a parent of an autistic child eventually becomes.

Adiffer (talk) 00:19, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on that! Having stuff explained like this from a non-autistic perspective is very valuable to us and always welcome. :) --Fochti (talk) 00:35, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

You are very welcome. I hope it helps all of us cope as we adapt to each other. My sincere hope is that knowing of these channels should help everyone.

My father and I had what I call a grunt language. With a few motions and a couple of non-worded sounds (word content =0%), we could convey to each other a great deal about how we were feeling at the moment. We did it without much thought, though. It was one of my sisters who pointed it out to me. She found it hilarious.Adiffer (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2022 (UTC)