Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The terms “voice,” “prosody,” and “laughter” refer primarily to vocal, nonlinguistic aspects of communication. Human communication is rich with meaning conveyed through multiple channels, often divided into verbal (language, words, and symbols) and nonverbal. It may be tempting to think of nonverbal communication as primarily visual, but speakers convey much meaning vocally, too. Considering prosody, voice, and laughter together may promote a misleading view that spoken language operates somewhat independently from such paralinguistic indicators (also called supra-segmentals in linguistics). This view has its origins in scholarly traditions that begin with studying the printed word. A different starting point is interaction, where all features of message production work integrally to contribute to meaning, which participants negotiate moment by moment. The French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure captured this distinction between studying langue , the abstract system that a particular group of people internalizes, and parole , actual speaking practices. Prosody and voice features such as pitch, intonation, emphasis, volume, rhythm, timing, and tempo contribute to the emergent meaning of utterances. For example, intonation at a possible transition point (where change from one speaker to another is relevant) helps mark an utterance as a completed question (upward intonation) or ... log in or subscribe to read full text