Prosody and Humor
Recognizing sarcasm without language
tải về 1.21 Mb. Chế độ xem pdf
|
21-tran thanh ai
| Recognizing sarcasm without language
A cross-linguistic study of English and Cantonese* Henry S. Cheang and Marc D. Pell McGill University The goal of the present research was to determine whether certain speaker inten- tions conveyed through prosody in an unfamiliar language can be accurately recognized. English and Cantonese utterances expressing sarcasm, sincerity, humorous irony, or neutrality through prosody were presented to English and Cantonese listeners unfamiliar with the other language. Listeners identified the communicative intent of utterances in both languages in a crossed design. Participants successfully identified sarcasm spoken in their native language but identified sarcasm at near-chance levels in the unfamiliar language. Both groups were relatively more successful at recognizing the other attitudes when listening to the unfamiliar language (in addition to the native language). Our data suggest that while sarcastic utterances in Cantonese and English share certain acoustic features, these cues are insufficient to recognize sarcasm between languages; rather, this ability depends on (native) language experience. 1. Introduction Sarcasm can be described as a negative critical attitude held by speakers that is ex- pressed to mock and criticize other persons or events (Kreuz and Glucksberg 1989; Lee and Katz 1998). Like other forms of verbal irony, the expression of sarcasm in speech is characterized by indirect language meant to be interpreted non-literally by the listener; specific contexts, particular vocabulary, and a number of acoustic cues appear to contribute in a unique manner to sarcastic interpretation (Utsumi 2000). Although many studies to date have focused on the contextual mechanisms that drive sarcastic interpretations during human communication, a few have * This research was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research — K.M. Hunter Doctoral Training Award and a Bridge Funding Award from the Center for Research on Language, Mind, and Brain (McGill University) to the first author, and operating funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (to the second author). 16 Henry S. Cheang and Marc D. Pell examined the role of prosody in this communicative context. For example, Anolli et al. (2002) have shown indications that the acoustic cues that convey sarcasm are different from those that convey positive, humorous forms of verbal irony (hence- forth referred to as “humorous irony” or “humor” for brevity, although note that humorous irony does not encompass all forms of humor). The goal of this study was to advance the literature by investigating whether listeners can use prosody to accurately recognize sarcasm and other commonly-expressed speaker attitudes in their native language and in a completely foreign language. Details of our rationale and approach are provided in what follows. tải về 1.21 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
|