This study aims to examine the influence of habitual speech patterns—specifically the "everyday speech tone", one of the four causes of the "Jjo" phenomenon identified by Choi Jeong-seon—on beginning actors, and to develop practical methods for im...
This study aims to examine the influence of habitual speech patterns—specifically the "everyday speech tone", one of the four causes of the "Jjo" phenomenon identified by Choi Jeong-seon—on beginning actors, and to develop practical methods for improving it. Although actors are expected to communicate a character’s emotions and meanings through dialogue, most novices remain unaware of their own habitual intonation and rhythm. As a result, their lines are delivered uniformly and out of context, weakening the semantic function of dialogue and leading actors to reproduce their personal speech habits rather than the linguistic intentions of the character.
Kim Gyun-hyeong (2005) identified errors in speech intonation as problems of vocalization, habit, and volition, emphasizing that habitual errors arise from the interaction of physical conditions, acquired linguistic habits, personality, and temperamental response patterns. He argued that improvement in speech is not merely a technical matter but a process of recognizing and adjusting ingrained habits.
Building upon this perspective, Choi Jeong-seon (2007) analyzed the fixed-pattern phenomenon "Jjo" in stage speech and proposed "speech neutralization training" as a method for counteracting distortions caused by everyday speech habits. According to Choi, speech neutralization does not denote the absence of emotion but a structured state in which emotion can operate naturally upon a well-ordered linguistic foundation.
Traditional acting pedagogy has often employed prose reading or neutral-text training for neutralization. However, such materials inherently contain narrative and emotional structures that limit the actor’s ability to isolate and adjust speech habits at a structural level. Emotional cues embedded in the text make it difficult to fully block affective intervention, and the meaning structure is inevitably influenced by the surrounding dramatic context.
To address these limitations, the present study reconfigures Choi’s concept of speech neutralization into a practical language-training model grounded in broadcast speech training. Broadcast speech emphasizes meaning-centered declarative delivery, providing a structural approach to restoring balance in rhythm and intonation. Information-centered texts such as news scripts minimize emotional interference and function as effective materials for reorganizing linguistic structure according to logical progression.
Based on this approach, this study systematizes speech neutralization training into three stages:
(1) Awareness Stage – recording and analyzing one’s own speech to identify unconscious intonation patterns;
(2) Purification Stage – eliminating unnecessary habitual features and practicing meaning-centered delivery;
(3) Application Stage – using declarative broadcast scripts to construct a balanced speech structure.
Ultimately, this study articulates a language-centered model of speech neutralization designed to improve the habitual speech patterns underlying "Jjo" in beginning actors, particularly those rooted in everyday speech. Broadcast speech serves as a practical foundation for helping actors recognize and reorganize their habitual patterns before approaching a character’s lines. By supplementing the limitations of prose reading and neutral-text methods, this research proposes a practical and structurally oriented model for foundational speech training in actor education.