Prosodic cues in polite and rude Mandarin speech

Fan, Ping; Gu, Wentao

doi:10.1109/iscslp.2016.7918491

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…In Chinese, however, pitch variation is reserved for distinguishing lexical meaning and prosodic boundaries but is not normally utilised to convey pragmatic meaning (Peng et al, 2005). Existing research on pragmatic prosodic cues in Chinese (Fan & Gu, 2016;Gu et al, 2011) proves that politeness is…”

Section: Politeness Cues In Teacher Directives In Russianmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception of Prosodic and Aspectual Cues to Politeness in Teacher Directives in L1 and L2 Russian

Duryagin

Fokina

2022

JLE

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Background: Several studies in interlanguage pragmatics have reported Russian directive speech acts to take a particular position within the dimensions of linguistic politeness and (in)directness, when compared to some Germanic and Romance languages extensively studied in this framework.Purpose of the study: The present paper aimed to investigate the role of language specific cues to politeness in Russian requests by examining their perception by native speakers and L2 learners in a scenario of teacher-student interaction.Methods: An experiment was conducted in which L1 and L2 groups rated the politeness of teacher directives in Russian on a discrete 7-point scale. Three variables were controlled for in the experimental design: the directness of the speech act (manifested in the choice between an imperative or an interrogative construction), verbal aspect, and the type of nuclear pitch accent.Findings: The obtained data generally corroborate existing studies, demonstrating that both native Russian speakers and learners of Russian with Chinese L1 do not judge as impolite direct imperative strategies employed in teacher requests. Though both groups of participants similarly relied on intonational cues in their judgements, the L2 learners did not perform target-like in evaluating the pragmatics of verbal aspect. Within the native group, the usage of imperfective verbs both in direct and conventionally indirect constructions was perceived as a highly salient indicator of impoliteness. Conversely, the size of this effect in L2 judgements did not reach a significance level, implying that this language specific cue is not acquired through incidental learning at pre-intermediate or intermediate proficiency levels.Conclusions: Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of explicit pragmatic instruction even for students who have sufficient experience studying abroad; furthermore, they outline new directions for empirical studies in Russian from the perspective of interlanguage pragmatics.

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Section: Politeness Cues In Teacher Directives In Russianmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception of Prosodic and Aspectual Cues to Politeness in Teacher Directives in L1 and L2 Russian

Duryagin

Fokina

2022

JLE

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“…This is the case with Korean (Shin, 2005;Winter & Grawunder, 2012), Taiwanese Mandarin (Lin et al, (2006), German (Grawunder et al, 2014), and Catalan (Hübscher et al, 2018). However, there are also many other acoustic variables that can index polite speech, including low intensity (e.g., Culpeper et al, 2003;Idemaru et al, 2020), longer speech duration (e.g., Fan & Gu, 2016;Navarro & Cabedo Nebot, 2014;Ofuka et al, 2000), and voice quality features (Hübscher et al, 2018;Idemaru et al, 2019;Winter & Grawunder, 2012), among others. This suggests that politenessrelated meanings are signaled not just by one cue alone, but by a complex web of acoustic cues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Korean speakers hyperarticulate vowels in polite speech*

Oh¹,

Winter²,

Idemaru³

2021

Phonetics Speech Sci.

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In line with recent attention to the multimodal expression of politeness, the present study examined the association between polite speech and acoustic features through the analysis of vowels produced in casual and polite speech contexts in Korean. Fourteen adult native speakers of Seoul Korean produced the utterances in two social conditions to elicit polite (professor) and casual (friend) speech. Vowel duration and the first (F1) and second formants (F2) of seven sentence-and phrase-initial monophthongs were measured. The results showed that polite speech shares acoustic similarities with vowel production in clear speech: speakers showed greater vowel space expansion in polite than casual speech in an effort to enhance perceptual intelligibility. Especially, female speakers hyperarticulated (front) vowels for polite speech, independent of speech rate. The implications for the acoustic encoding of social stance in polite speech are further discussed.

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Prosody influence on (im)politeness perception in Chinese-German intercultural communication

Cao

2023

Journal of Politeness Research

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This paper aims to explore the influences of prosody on (im)politeness perception in intercultural communication. Based on empirical data collected in perceptual experiments, the paper compares the perception of the (im)politeness prosodic properties of L1 German speakers and L2 German speakers of Chinese origin. It was found that the two subject groups show clear distinctions in their (im)politeness perceptions and that prosodic features exert different impacts on (im)politeness perception: L2 German speakers of Chinese origin perceive lower acoustic intensity, more pauses, and lower muscle tension as indicators of higher level of politeness, whereas the opposite holds true for L1 German speakers. In addition, the former demonstrate higher sensitivity to speech rate and modal particle stress than the latter. The study’s findings indicate that (im)politeness and prosody perception are influenced by people’s first language and home-grown culture, and a prosodic mitigation strategy may not be fully applicable in intercultural communication.

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Prosodic cues in polite and rude Mandarin speech

Cited by 4 publications

References 9 publications

Perception of Prosodic and Aspectual Cues to Politeness in Teacher Directives in L1 and L2 Russian

Perception of Prosodic and Aspectual Cues to Politeness in Teacher Directives in L1 and L2 Russian

Korean speakers hyperarticulate vowels in polite speech*

Prosody influence on (im)politeness perception in Chinese-German intercultural communication

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