INTRODUCTION

What has happened to the human voice. Vox Humana. Hollering, shouting, quiet talking, buzz. I was leaving the airport, it's in Atlanta. You know you leave the gate, you take a train that took you to concourse of your choice, and I get in to this train. Dead silence, Few people are seated or standing. Up above you hear a voice that once was human voice, but no longer, now it talks like a machine - "Concourse 1, Fort Worth, Dallas, Lubbock " - that kind of voice. And just then the doors are about to close - pneumatic doors - one young couple rush in and push open the doors and get in. Without missing a beat, that voice above says, "Because of late entry, we're delayed 30 seconds". The people looked at that couple as if that couple just committed mass murder, you know. And the couple are shrinking like this, you know‥. I'm known for my talking. I'm gabby. And so I say, "George Orwell, your time has come and gone!" I expect a laugh - dead silence. And now they look at me and I'm with the couple, the three of us are at the Hill of Calvary on Good Friday. And then I say, "My God, where's the human voice"? And just then there's a little baby - maybe the baby is about a year or something. And I say, "Sir or Madam" to the baby. "What is your opinion of the human species"? Well what does the baby do? baby starts giggling. I said, "Thank God! The sound of a human voice." [Terkel (2008)].

Studs Terkel's soliloquy on the human condition sets the stage for this chapter on the use of synthesized speech in computerized Speech Generating Devices (SGD) by individuals with Complex Communication Needs (CCN). For more than any other application of this technology, speech synthesis (and supporting computer tools) is charged with the responsibility to serve as a major expressive modality during social interactions. As argued in this chapter, this responsibility goes beyond that of merely being a tool to convey information, it also serves importantly as an interactive tool for achieving common ground and as a means for conveying a speaker's, health, attitude, affiliations, emotion, meaning and identity. What can be done to humanize speech synthesis for individuals who use SGDs as their social voice? What is it about the vox artificialis that keeps it from being one's voice?