Prosody and Humor
Comparison of the results for the dyadic exchange vs. the canned
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Comparison of the results for the dyadic exchange vs. the canned performance data 4.1 Pitch From even a cursory examination of Tables 3 and 4, it is obvious that the results of the conversational data analyzed in this study are consistent with those collected in the interview setting of Pickering et al. (2009). We find that the average pitch of the non-humorous prominent syllables do not differ significantly from the aver- age humorous ones. Furthermore, neither the punch lines taken by themselves, nor the jab lines, or the ironical turns, differ significantly from the average pitch. There are some insignificant but suggestive data, such as the fact that ironical turns tend to be slightly higher than the average pitch, but no general conclusion can be drawn on this basis. The most obvious difference with the results in Pickering et al. (2009) is that in these examples, we no longer find significantly lower pitch for the humorous sequences. In Pickering et al. 2009, we propose that the significantly lower pitch found in punch lines of the humorous narrative reflects the importance of the larger prosodic structure of the paratone. Also known as speech paragraphs and pitch se- quences, paratones are a prosodic unit comprising tone units that begins with a high pitch and ends with a final low pitch, which may also be accompanied by longer pauses. Paratones have been identified across genres within longer sections of spo- ken discourse, and function in a way similar to paragraphs in written discourse. In 48 Salvatore Attardo, Lucy Pickering, and Amanda Baker the case of our data, the final closing low pitch of the paratone “trumped” the pos- sible higher pitch that might be expected for the punch line. In the data discussed here, however, only two of the thirteen instances of humor are punch lines, whereas all the instances of humor in Pickering et al. (2009) are punch lines. Hence the re- sults in this study are consistent with the explanation that the position at the end of a paratone explains the significantly lower pitch for the punch lines. Out of the two punch lines in this study, one is much lower (40Hz) than the serious text, while the other is in fact higher than the serious text. Given that we are considering only one instance, it is impossible to further speculate on the significance of this fact. We then tested whether the humorous turns might not be average in pitch, in relation to the conversation at large, but nonetheless significantly marked in relation to the co-text in which they occur. In order to test this hypothesis, we compared the turn immediately before the humorous turn with the humorous turn itself. In some cases there were two prominent syllables in the humorous turn and we compared the second one, which was in both cases the one closest to the jab/punch line. In two cases we had to discard a humorous turn, which occurred immediately after another humorous turn (humor support). The results show that there is no significant difference in pitch (the humor is on average 8 Hz higher than the preceding turn). The actual values can be found in Table 5 below. tải về 1.21 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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