Prosody and Humor
On the cross-linguistic recognition of speaker attitudes
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On the cross-linguistic recognition of speaker attitudes To our knowledge, no studies have looked at the cross-linguistic recognition of sarcasm/irony from prosody, although recent work has shown that some speaker intentions (marking attention and comfort) can be correctly inferred by adults listening to a foreign language (Bryant and Barrett 2007). A more established literature has investigated how basic emotions (e.g., joy, anger) are understood from prosody; if one looks at this work, there is consistent evidence that listen- ers exposed to a foreign language can accurately recognize a speaker’s emotion strictly from prosodic attributes of speech at levels well exceeding chance (Albas, McCluskey, and Albas 1976; Beier and Zautra 1972; Kramer 1964; Pell, Monetta, Paulmann, and Kotz 2009; Scherer et al. 2001; Thompson and Balkwill 2006; van Bezooijen, Otto, and Heenan 1983). Vocal emotion expressions may be recognized well across cultures because they are associated with common psycho-physiologi- cal responses to experiencing an emotion that impact on the vocal apparatus (Frick 1985; Scherer 1986); these reactions promote modal tendencies in the acoustic structure of vocal emotion expressions which are detectable across languages (Pell, Paulmann, Dara, Alasseri, and Kotz 2009; Scherer, Banse, and Walbott 2001). For example, exposure to unpleasant (e.g., disgust-inducing) stimuli is associated with heightened tension in the orofacial region (among other behaviors) that evoke spitting or regurgitation; these gestures contribute to predictable changes in reso- nance and voice quality when a speaker expresses disgust while speaking (Scherer 1986). Although sarcasm assumes a more interpersonal function in communica- tion and is not dependent of basic emotional processes, it remains possible that the inherently negative attitude expressed in sarcasm enacts physiological pro- cesses similar to those experienced when one encounters certain negative stim- uli (Fonagy 1971; Rockwell 2000a, 2005). Alternately (or concurrently), sarcastic Recognizing sarcasm without language 19 messages could somehow encode information that bears a resemblance to (but is by no means identical to) certain “universal” emotion features (Haiman 1990, 1998). If true, it is possible that listeners exposed to a foreign language could infer sarcastic intent when exposed to these more basic emotive features (in addition to the possibility that there is a distinct “ironic tone of voice” that is similar across languages). However, even in the cross-linguistic literature on emotion process- ing, it should be underlined that adult listeners typically demonstrate an “in-group advantage” for recognizing emotions produced by persons who share the same linguistic and cultural background (see Elfenbein and Ambady 2002 for a review). These latter findings argue that despite modal tendencies in how emotions are expressed through prosody, social conventions continue to play an important role in how meanings are inferred from prosody within and across language groups. One might expect that social conventions would play an even stronger role in the cross-linguistic processing of speaker attitudes and intentions such as sarcasm, especially since no consistent acoustic profile has yet been associated with sarcas- tic speech across languages. Unfortunately, there is little research to inform these predictions to date. tải về 1.21 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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