Paralanguage
Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of
The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics and was invented by
His work has served as a basis for all later research, especially those investigating the relationship between paralanguage and culture (since paralanguage is learned, it differs by language and culture). A good example is the work of John J. Gumperz on language and social identity, which specifically describes paralinguistic differences between participants in intercultural interactions.[5] The film Gumperz made for BBC in 1982, Multiracial Britain: Cross talk, does a particularly good job of demonstrating cultural differences in paralanguage and their impact on relationships.
Paralinguistic information, because it is
Aspects of the speech signal
Perspectival aspects
Speech signals arrive at a listener's ears with acoustic properties that may allow listeners to identify location of the speaker (sensing distance and direction, for example). Sound localization functions in a similar way also for non-speech sounds. The perspectival aspects of lip reading are more obvious and have more drastic effects when head turning is involved.
Organic aspects
The
Expressive aspects
Paralinguistic cues such as loudness, rate, pitch, pitch contour, and to some extent formant frequencies of an utterance, contribute to the emotive or attitudinal quality of an utterance. Typically, attitudes are expressed intentionally and emotions without intention,[citation needed] but attempts to fake or to hide emotions are not unusual.[citation needed]
Consequently, paralinguistic cues relating to expression have a moderate effect of semantic marking. That is, a message may be made more or less coherent by adjusting its expressive presentation. For instance, upon hearing an utterance such as "I drink a glass of wine every night before I go to sleep" is coherent when made by a speaker identified as an adult, but registers a small semantic anomaly when made by a speaker identified as a child.[6] This anomaly is significant enough to be measured through electroencephalography, as an N400. Autistic individuals have a reduced sensitivity to this and similar effects.[7][failed verification]
Linguistic aspects
Ordinary phonetic transcriptions of utterances reflect only the linguistically informative quality. The problem of how listeners factor out the linguistically informative quality from speech signals is a topic of current research.
Some of the linguistic features of speech, in particular of its prosody, are paralinguistic or pre-linguistic in origin. A most fundamental and widespread phenomenon of this kind is described by John Ohala as the "frequency code".[9] This code works even in communication across species. It has its origin in the fact that the acoustic frequencies in the voice of small vocalizers are high, while they are low in the voice of large vocalizers. This gives rise to secondary meanings such as "harmless", "submissive", "unassertive", which are naturally associated with smallness, while meanings such as "dangerous", "dominant", and "assertive" are associated with largeness. In most languages, the frequency code also serves the purpose of distinguishing questions from statements. It is universally reflected in expressive variation, and it is reasonable to assume that it has phylogenetically given rise to the sexual dimorphism that lies behind the large difference in pitch between average female and male adults.
In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and instant messaging, paralinguistic elements can be displayed by emoticons, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to misunderstandings.
Specific forms of paralinguistic respiration
Gasps
A gasp is a kind of paralinguistic
As a symptom of physiological problems, apneustic respirations (a.k.a. apneusis), are gasps related to the brain damage associated with a stroke or other trauma.
Sighs
A sigh is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a deep and especially audible, single
Scientific studies show that babies sigh after 50 to 100 breaths. This serves to improve the mechanical properties of lung tissue, and it also helps babies to develop a regular breathing rhythm. Behaviors equivalent to sighing have also been observed in animals such as dogs, monkeys, and horses.
In text messages and internet chat rooms, or in comic books, a sigh is usually represented with the word itself, 'sigh', possibly within asterisks, *sigh*.
Sighing is also a reflex, governed by a few neurons.[13]
Moans and groans
Moaning and groaning both refer to an extended sound emanating from the throat, which is typically made by engaging in sexual activity.[14][15] Moans and groans are also noises traditionally associated with ghosts, and their supposed experience of suffering in the afterlife. They are sometimes used to indicate displeasure.
Throat clearing
In
As a form of
Mhm
Mhm is between a literal language and movement, by making a noise "hmm" or "mhm", to make a pause for the conversation or as a chance to stop and think.
The "mhm" utterance is often used in narrative interviews, such as an interview with a disaster survivor or sexual violence victim. In this kind of interview, it is better for the interviewers or counselors not to intervene too much when an interviewee is talking. The "mhm" assures the interviewee that they are being heard and can continue their story. Observing emotional differences and taking care of an interviewee's mental status is an important way to find slight changes during conversation.[22]
Huh?
"Huh?", meaning "what?" (that is, used when an utterance by another is not fully heard or requires clarification), is an essentially universal expression, but may be a normal word (learned like other words) and not paralanguage. If it is a word, it is a rare (or possibly even unique) one, being found with basically the same sound and meaning in almost all languages.
Physiology of paralinguistic comprehension
fMRI studies
Several studies have used the fMRI paradigm to observe brain states brought about by adjustments of paralinguistic information. One such study investigated the effect of interjections that differed along the criteria of lexical index (more or less "wordy") as well as neutral or emotional pronunciation; a higher hemodynamic response in auditory cortical gyri was found when more robust paralinguistic data was available. Some activation was found in lower brain structures such as the pons, perhaps indicating an emotional response.[25]
See also
- Business communication
- Intercultural competence
- Kinesics
- Meta message
- Meta-communication
- Metacommunicative competence
- Prosody (linguistics)
- Proxemics
References
- ^ Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1990). Notes in the history of intercultural communication: The Foreign Service Institute and the mandate for intercultural training. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 76, 262–281.
- ^ Trager, G. L. (1958). Paralanguage: A first approximation. Studies in Linguistics, 13, 1–12.
- ^ Trager, G. L. (1960). Taos III: Paralanguage. Anthropological Linguistics, 2, 24–30.
- ^ Trager, G. L. (1961). The typology of paralanguage. Anthropological Linguistics, 3 (1), 17–21.
- ^ Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Van Berkum, J. J., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C. M., Kos, M., & Hagoort, P. (2008). The neural integration of speaker and message. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 580–591.
- ^ Groen, W. B., Tesink, C., Petersson, K. M., Van Berkum, J., Van der Gaag, R. J., Hagoort, P. and Buitelaar, J. K. (2010). Semantic, factual, and social language comprehension in adolescents with autism: an fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex, 20(8), 1937–1945.
- ^ Nygaard, L. C., Lunders, E. R. (2002). Resolution of lexical ambiguity by emotional tone of voice. Memory & Cognition, 30(4), 583–593.
- .
- ^ a b c Rachel Broncher, A labor of love: a complete guide to childbirth for the mind, body, and soul (2004), p. 145.
- ^ Fernando Poyatos, Paralanguage: a linguistic and interdisciplinary approach to interactive speech and sounds (1993), page 330.
- ^ Paul Ekman, Emotions revealed: recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication (2007), p. 193.
- ^ Schmidt, Elaine. "UCLA and Stanford researchers pinpoint origin of sighing reflex in the brain". UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved 2019-02-01.
- ^ Altman, Mara (August 21, 2018). "What Our Sex Sounds Say About Us". Time.
- ^ Ben-Zeév, Aaron (April 16, 2019). "Why We Moan and Scream During Sex". Psychology Today.
- ^ "Throat-Clear". www.nonverbal-dictionary.org. Archived from the original on 2016-09-17. Retrieved 2016-09-10.
- ^ Question Authority: Think for Yourself, Estren & Potter, 2012:122.
- ^ "ahem – Onomatopoeia List". 10 August 2013.
- ^ "the definition of verbal". Dictionary.com.
- ^ Primatology, Delmar 1984:46.
- ^ Book of Etiquette and Manners, Chapter 3, by Nimeran Sahukar & Prem P. Bhalla.
- ^ The healing effect of storytelling, Gabriele Rosenthal 2003
- PMID 24260108.
- ^ Olga Khazan (November 12, 2013). "Huh Means the Same Thing in Every Language". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
- ^ Dietrich, S., Hertrich, I., Kai, A., Ischebeck, A., Ackermann, H. (2008). Understanding the emotional expression of verbal interjections: a functional MRI study. Brain Imaging, 19(18), 1751–1755.
Further reading
- Cook, Guy (2001) The Discourse of Advertising. (second edition) London: Routledge. (chapter 4 on paralanguage and semiotics).
- Robbins, S. and Langton, N. (2001) Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications (2nd Canadian ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Traunmüller, H. (2005) "Paralinguale Phänomene" (Paralinguistic phenomena), chapter 76 in: SOCIOLINGUISTICS An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, 2nd ed., U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. Mattheier, P. Trudgill (eds.), Vol. 1, pp. 653–665. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York.
- Matthew McKay, Martha Davis, Patrick Fanning [1983] (1995) Messages: The Communication Skills Book, Second Edition, New Harbinger Publications, ISBN 978-1-57224-592-1, pp. 63–67.