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The “Good Speech Movement” at Smith: A History of the Spoken English Department: Voice Correction Campaign

Guide to the history of the Spoken English department and its college-wide voice correction campaign. Written by Sonia Carroll '24, Reference Assistant.

Letter from Helen W. Landon to William Allan Neilson, February 11, 1919. Departments- Spoken English, 1919-39, undated. Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Voice Correction Campaign

From the late 1910s through the mid 1940s, the main goals and operations of the Spoken English department revolved around pathologizing and "correcting” what faculty perceived as rampant voice defects among the student body. In one departmental document, these goals and operations were referred to as the “Good Speech movement at Smith.”(1)  

 

Notably, the criteria for voice “inadequacy” established by the Spoken English Department were sweeping and subjective. In a 1919 letter to President William Allan Neilson, Spoken English faculty member Helen Landon stated that "The fact that 60% of the class have been reported as having three of the leading defects of voice, nasality, breathiness and throatiness seems to indicate that the greatest work of the department of speech in a woman's college is along the lines of voice correction."(2) Other voice “defects” that Landon asserted were prevalent among most Smith students were high pitch and unpleasant tone. She claimed that students were unaware of their own voice defects because they were surrounded by others with voice defects, and she characterized Smith as a community highly afflicted with speech issues that urgently needed to be fixed.  

 

Landon’s assessment of Smith students’ voices was not unique; other Spoken English faculty echoed her ideas and called for a voice correction campaign. President William Allan Neilson was receptive to this campaign push and publicly endorsed the department’s activities, ideas, and research throughout his presidency from 1917 - 1939.(3) Right around when the department began it's slow decline in the early 1940s, the results of the first-year voice and speech tests indicated that close to 90% of the students had moderate to severe voice "defects."(4)


  1. Department of Spoken English request for 6-week summer session, 1923. Departments- Spoken English, 1919-39, undated. Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  2. Letter from Helen W. Landon to William Allan Neilson, February 11, 1919. Departments- Spoken English, 1919-39, undated. Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. 
  3. Spoken English Department, Jan. 1933. Speech Department Courses: descriptions, exams, and notebook, 1925-1968. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  4. March 1941, Freshman Spoken English Tests results breakdown by group. Freshmen Spoken English, 1934 - 1942. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.