Accelerations and speed limits: An essay on the vocal limits of semiocapitalism

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how exposure to capitalist environments accelerates speech. Voice is proposed as a partial register of how we are as bodied subjects within affective environments with semiotic and communicative pressures. Voice is a locus of trauma, a sonic scar that sounds out the semiotic pressures of capitalism. Accelerated speech is posited as symptomatic of semiocapitalism. Mirroring, vocal convergence, psychotropic stimulation and exposure to accelerated speech in television and Internet are proposed as key factors that influence our speech rate. The trend of compressing increasing amounts of dialogue into television shows is argued to be a dramatic microcosm of how semiocapitalism conditions us to communicate faster. Finally, manifestations of our speed limit are explored. Vocal stalls or hesitations, the deceleration or pause of the semiotic flows we voice, are posited as symptomatic of the disjunct between the accelerating demands of semiocapitalism and the human cognitive and corporeal limit. The shift from speech to voice is symptomatic of trauma. The human buffering of the vocal fry is the sound of the human, subjected to the accelerating demands of semiocapitalism, reaching its limit.