While general prosodic markers of humor—the ‘bells and whistles’ assumed to mark humor in folk th... more While general prosodic markers of humor—the ‘bells and whistles’ assumed to mark humor in folk theories—have been shown to be largely absent during jokes and subsequent talk between strangers, voice quality in specific has not been much studied in terms of humor (Pickering et al., 2009; Attardo et al., 2011, 2013). Voice quality is a complex topic within phonetics, yet alone general linguistics, involving discreet settings of the vocal tract, from the lips to the larynx, which affect the acoustics of speech with each general reconfiguration of the articulators, such as occur during smiling. There is ample evidence that smiling, laughing, and humor also co-occur during conversational humor; conversational humor is marked non-discreetly by speaker smiling, as well as smiling by the addressee (humor support), upon joke punch lines (Gironzetti et al., 2019). Both smiling and laughing affect the configuration of the articulators.
This research examines two conversations between friends in a multi modal corpora of conversational humor in American English and French. Four speakers are compared for intra- and inter-speaker differences in acoustic measures of voice quality and prosody during humorous and non-humorous utterances. Across speakers F0 and Energy (intensity) are significantly higher on average during humorous utterances. The Harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) is generally higher during non-humorous utterances, especially in the higher frequency bands, meaning conversational humor between friends is more breathy and possibly harsher overall. The source is likely both a shortened vocal track during smiling, and well as higher breathiness during and around laughter. Noticeable inter-speaker variability is observed in various voice quality measures. A novel finding is that a key measure of pathological phonation (cepstral peak prominence or CPP) is improved (lowered) during humorous utterances in three of four speakers. The measure is associated with tense voice, among other voice qualities. The health benefits of laughter—which appears to induce post-pulse relaxation into the musculature of the vocal system—upon phonation are implicated as warranting further study.
There are not many recent corpora of spoken academic English that make the pragmatic functions of... more There are not many recent corpora of spoken academic English that make the pragmatic functions of academic English on a major Midwestern State University campus accessible to TESOL practitioners, applied linguistics researchers, or language learners. To begin to address this deficit, this research investigates the speech functions used in a subset of on-campus conversations drawn from the University of Northern Iowa Corpus of Spoken English (UNICASE), a corpus of Academic spoken English being compiled for the purpose of this research and to serve a wider need for such a resource. For the purposes of this thesis, two dyadic conversations from UNICASE totaling 34-minutes were manually annotated for 129 speech acts in 16 categories. The taxonomy of speech acts used was based on Weisser’s (2019) DART 3.0 speech act taxonomy, as was the choice to use the XML format. Findings indicate that variations in context, speaker role, speaker identity, and type of dialogue may influence the normed frequency of speech acts used by individual speakers between and within dialogues, such that statements of and references to constraints, processes, and reasons occur more in the transactional dialogue between acquaintances, while reports, hedges, references to objects, agreements, and expressions of liking, dislike, and stance are more frequent in the unconstrained dialogue between intimates. Facework strategies appear to vary across the two talks according to social roles. This study demonstrates how variations in speech functions and politeness strategies can be meaningfully compared across speakers and speech events using a corpus-based approach to discourse analysis that seeks to make these findings relevant to TESOL practitioners and their students.
While general prosodic markers of humor—the ‘bells and whistles’ assumed to mark humor in folk th... more While general prosodic markers of humor—the ‘bells and whistles’ assumed to mark humor in folk theories—have been shown to be largely absent during jokes and subsequent talk between strangers, voice quality in specific has not been much studied in terms of humor (Pickering et al., 2009; Attardo et al., 2011, 2013). Voice quality is a complex topic within phonetics, yet alone general linguistics, involving discreet settings of the vocal tract, from the lips to the larynx, which affect the acoustics of speech with each general reconfiguration of the articulators, such as occur during smiling. There is ample evidence that smiling, laughing, and humor also co-occur during conversational humor; conversational humor is marked non-discreetly by speaker smiling, as well as smiling by the addressee (humor support), upon joke punch lines (Gironzetti et al., 2019). Both smiling and laughing affect the configuration of the articulators.
This research examines two conversations between friends in a multi modal corpora of conversational humor in American English and French. Four speakers are compared for intra- and inter-speaker differences in acoustic measures of voice quality and prosody during humorous and non-humorous utterances. Across speakers F0 and Energy (intensity) are significantly higher on average during humorous utterances. The Harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) is generally higher during non-humorous utterances, especially in the higher frequency bands, meaning conversational humor between friends is more breathy and possibly harsher overall. The source is likely both a shortened vocal track during smiling, and well as higher breathiness during and around laughter. Noticeable inter-speaker variability is observed in various voice quality measures. A novel finding is that a key measure of pathological phonation (cepstral peak prominence or CPP) is improved (lowered) during humorous utterances in three of four speakers. The measure is associated with tense voice, among other voice qualities. The health benefits of laughter—which appears to induce post-pulse relaxation into the musculature of the vocal system—upon phonation are implicated as warranting further study.
There are not many recent corpora of spoken academic English that make the pragmatic functions of... more There are not many recent corpora of spoken academic English that make the pragmatic functions of academic English on a major Midwestern State University campus accessible to TESOL practitioners, applied linguistics researchers, or language learners. To begin to address this deficit, this research investigates the speech functions used in a subset of on-campus conversations drawn from the University of Northern Iowa Corpus of Spoken English (UNICASE), a corpus of Academic spoken English being compiled for the purpose of this research and to serve a wider need for such a resource. For the purposes of this thesis, two dyadic conversations from UNICASE totaling 34-minutes were manually annotated for 129 speech acts in 16 categories. The taxonomy of speech acts used was based on Weisser’s (2019) DART 3.0 speech act taxonomy, as was the choice to use the XML format. Findings indicate that variations in context, speaker role, speaker identity, and type of dialogue may influence the normed frequency of speech acts used by individual speakers between and within dialogues, such that statements of and references to constraints, processes, and reasons occur more in the transactional dialogue between acquaintances, while reports, hedges, references to objects, agreements, and expressions of liking, dislike, and stance are more frequent in the unconstrained dialogue between intimates. Facework strategies appear to vary across the two talks according to social roles. This study demonstrates how variations in speech functions and politeness strategies can be meaningfully compared across speakers and speech events using a corpus-based approach to discourse analysis that seeks to make these findings relevant to TESOL practitioners and their students.
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Thesis Chapters by Jacob Rigal
occur during smiling. There is ample evidence that smiling, laughing, and humor also co-occur during conversational humor; conversational humor is marked non-discreetly by speaker smiling, as well as smiling by the addressee (humor support), upon joke punch lines (Gironzetti et al., 2019). Both smiling and laughing affect the configuration of the articulators.
This research examines two conversations between friends in a multi modal corpora of conversational humor in American English and French. Four speakers are compared for intra- and inter-speaker differences in acoustic measures of voice quality and prosody during humorous and non-humorous utterances. Across speakers F0 and Energy (intensity) are significantly higher on average during humorous utterances. The Harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) is generally higher during non-humorous utterances, especially in the higher frequency bands, meaning conversational humor between friends is more breathy and possibly harsher overall. The source is likely both a shortened vocal track during smiling, and well as higher breathiness during and around laughter. Noticeable inter-speaker variability is observed in various
voice quality measures. A novel finding is that a key measure of pathological phonation (cepstral peak prominence or CPP) is improved (lowered) during humorous utterances in three of four speakers. The measure is associated with tense voice, among other voice
qualities. The health benefits of laughter—which appears to induce post-pulse relaxation into the musculature of the vocal system—upon phonation are implicated as warranting further study.
Drafts by Jacob Rigal
occur during smiling. There is ample evidence that smiling, laughing, and humor also co-occur during conversational humor; conversational humor is marked non-discreetly by speaker smiling, as well as smiling by the addressee (humor support), upon joke punch lines (Gironzetti et al., 2019). Both smiling and laughing affect the configuration of the articulators.
This research examines two conversations between friends in a multi modal corpora of conversational humor in American English and French. Four speakers are compared for intra- and inter-speaker differences in acoustic measures of voice quality and prosody during humorous and non-humorous utterances. Across speakers F0 and Energy (intensity) are significantly higher on average during humorous utterances. The Harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) is generally higher during non-humorous utterances, especially in the higher frequency bands, meaning conversational humor between friends is more breathy and possibly harsher overall. The source is likely both a shortened vocal track during smiling, and well as higher breathiness during and around laughter. Noticeable inter-speaker variability is observed in various
voice quality measures. A novel finding is that a key measure of pathological phonation (cepstral peak prominence or CPP) is improved (lowered) during humorous utterances in three of four speakers. The measure is associated with tense voice, among other voice
qualities. The health benefits of laughter—which appears to induce post-pulse relaxation into the musculature of the vocal system—upon phonation are implicated as warranting further study.