Beyond the Booth: The Hidden Curriculum of Broadcast Voice Training and the Reshaping of Everyday Self-Presentation.
Main Article Content
Abstract
Broadcast and announcing programs teach a narrow set of vocal and rhetorical competencies: diaphragmatic placement, de-regionalized pronunciation, paced delivery, and audience-directed address. These competencies are taught explicitly, rehearsed repeatedly, and evaluated against a professional standard. What is rarely examined is what else this training teaches — not through the stated syllabus but through the sheer repetition of studio practice. This paper develops a conceptual model of broadcast voice pedagogy as a hidden curriculum: a site where explicit instruction in vocal technique produces implicit, durable dispositions that migrate beyond the studio into students' everyday self-presentation. Drawing on four theoretical traditions — hidden curriculum theory (Jackson, 1968; Apple, 1979), Bourdieu's (1977, 1991) concept of habitus and bodily hexis, Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical account of front- and back-stage performance, and sociolinguistic register and audience-design theory (Halliday, 1978; Bell, 1984) — the paper proposes that broadcast training does not merely produce a professional skill but restructures the boundary between performed and private selves. Because no primary data collection was undertaken, the paper adopts an integrative conceptual-review methodology, synthesizing existing empirical and theoretical literature into a novel explanatory model rather than reporting new findings. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda — including specific interview protocols and discourse-analytic methods — through which the proposed model could be empirically tested...
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
Adams, K., & Freeman, C. (2009). News speak: Phonetic variation in broadcast journalism education and expectation. Journal of Broadcasting Education, 4(2), 55-71.
Anyon, J. (1980). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Education, 162(1), 67-92.
Apple, M. W. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. Routledge.
Bell, A. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society, 13(2), 145-204.
Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Blackwell.
Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control: Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (R. Nice, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power (G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4-5), 585-614.
Coupland, N. (2007). Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge University Press.
Crowley, R. M. (2021). A scoping review of the hidden curriculum in social studies education. Theory & Research in Social Education, 49(1), 1-29.
Eckert, P. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(4), 453-476.
Giles, H., Coupland, N., & Coupland, J. (1991). Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence. In H. Giles, J. Coupland, & N. Coupland (Eds.), Contexts of accommodation (pp. 1-68). Cambridge University Press.
Giroux, H. A. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. Bergin & Garvey.
Giroux, H. A., & Penna, A. N. (1979). Social education in the classroom: The dynamics of the hidden curriculum. Theory & Research in Social Education, 7(1), 21-42.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books.
Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction. Bobbs-Merrill.
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. Free Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Edward Arnold.
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in classrooms. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Kärner, T., & Schneider, K. (2022). A scoping review on the hidden curriculum in education. Educational Research Review, 37, 100485.
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Podesva, R. J. (2007). Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(4), 478-504.
Provost Savard, Y., Montreuil, S., & Lapointe, D. (2023). Work-family spillover of satisfaction: The moderating role of domain boundary strength and identity salience. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 96(3), 599-623.
Sluss, D. M., van Dick, R., & Thompson, B. S. (2011). Role theory in organizations: A relational perspective. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 505-534). American Psychological Association.
Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104, 333-339.
Torraco, R. J. (2005). Writing integrative literature reviews: Guidelines and examples. Human Resource Development Review, 4(3), 356-367.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.