The Phonetic Shape of Second Assessments

–Conversational and Social

Considerations

Mirjam Elisabeth Eiswirth s1322502@sms.ed.ac.uk

Supervisor: Dr. Lauren Hall-LewPostgraduate Conference, LEL, UoE

30th of May 2014

Structure

• Research Question

• Definitions

• Pilot study

• Follow-up study (ongoing)

• Take-Home Message

Research Questions

• Is there gradience in the phonetic shape of the four types of second assessments?

• Which factors condition the gradience and the variation?

Definitions

• Assessment sequence

• Focus phrase

• Pitch prominence

• (Relative) f0-excursion

• Delta values

Pomerantz, 1984

Example Assessment Type

AS1: It’s beautiful outside.

AS2: It’s gorgeous!

Strong agreement

AS1: It’s beautiful outside.

AS2: Yeah, it’s beautiful.

‘same assessment’

AS1: It’s beautiful outside.

AS2: It’s okay.

Downgrading

AS1: It’s beautiful outside.

AS2: No, it’s not.

Strong disagreement

M1 And by football I mean (.) the European football and not American football (.) That’s pointless. American football is pointless.

F1 [O:::h rea::lly?]F2 Both are pointless.M1 NoF1 [yes they are]F2 yesM1 No

Example

• Assessment sequence • Focus phrase• Pitch prominence, • (Relative) f0-excursion • Delta values

Pitch values and f0-excursion

THE PILOT STUDY

-Information on academic context

-Pilot study – participants, data, transcription

-Preliminary findings and conclusions

The Research Context

• Is there gradience in the phonetic shape of the four types of second assessments?

• Conversation Analytic perspective: Richard Ogden (2006); John Local (2003)

• Variationist perspective: Malca Yaeger-Dror (et al.) (1996, 2002a/b/c, 2003)

Hypotheses

• Social Agreement Principle (cf. Sacks, 1987, Pomerantz, 1984)

– Agreements most prominent, disagreements least

prominent

• Cognitive Prominence Principle

– Disagreements most prominent, agreements least

prominent

The Data

• 6h of naturally occurring casual conversationbetween MSc students (11 participants)

• Focus on 4 speakers (Latin American, LatinAmerican/American, Canadian, Swiss-Irish) – 4 assessment sequences of each type per speaker

– Relative f0-excursion on focus word

• Parallel CA study looking at phonetic shape ofturn2 in relation to turn1

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Agree Same Down Disagree

%Mean f0-excursion on focus word

BUT

A Second Look – Stance/Face

• Stance: how does S2 position himself to what S1 said? (defensive, supportive, aggressive,…)

• Face: “positive social value a person claims for himself”; “on loan from society” (Goffman, 1981)

– Face orientations:

• Defensive

• Protective

• Aggressive

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

%Mean of relative f0-excursion on

focus word

Preliminary answers

• Yes, there is gradience

• The sequential context plays a decisive role -> work with delta values

• Expand factors to:– Stance

– Face

– Footing (speaker roles: animator, author, principal; Goffman, 1981)

THE FOLLOW-UP STUDY

- Building on the pilot study

-The corpus

-The first 30 minutes

Follow-up Study (ongoing)

• Data: 12 episodes of “A Good Read” (BBC4) with Harriet Gilbert

• Focus on: within- and beyond-category variation conditioned by stance, face, and footing

• Measure: f0 baseline, pitch range, f0-excursion on focus phrase; delta values between turn 2 and turn 1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Agreement Disagreement

%Relative f0-excursion on focus

word in turn 2

05

101520253035404550

Agreement Disagreement

%Mean of relative f0-excursions

on focus word in turn 2

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Agreement Disagreement

%Mean Delta values for relative f0-

excursion on focus phrase t2-t1

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

Agreement Disagreement

%Delta relative f0-excursion focus

word turn2-turn1

CONCLUSION

- Implications of the study

-Summary of preliminary findings

-Why this research

Where this applies

• Speech recognition & synthesis

– Modelling speech styles, emphasis, and emotions

• Language teaching

– acquisition of 2nd language prosody

• Intercultural communication

• Prosody-Semantics interface

– Tease apart how prosodic and lexical/semantic meaning interact

Take-Home Message

• We need to integrate the variationist and

conversation analytic perspective

– Honour sequential context: use delta values

– Move beyond ‘traditional’ sociolinguistic variables

like age or gender

– Open the picture to face, stance, and footing

References

• Goffman, E. (2003). On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction. Reflections, 4(3), 7-13. • Local, J. (2003). Variable domains and variable relevance: interpreting phonetic exponents. Journal of Phonetics,

31(3–4), 321-339.• Ogden, R. (2006). Phonetics and social action in agreements and disagreements. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(10),

1752-1775. • Podesva, R. J. (2007). Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona1. Journal

of Sociolinguistics, 11(4), 478-504. • Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/dispreferred turn

shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action - Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 57-101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Sacks, H. (1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguitiy in sequences in conversation. In J. R. E. Lee & G. Button (Eds.), Talk and Social Organisation (pp. 54-69). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

• Yaeger-Dror, M. (1996). Register as a variable in prosodic analysis: The case of the English negative. Speech Communication, 19(1), 39-60.

• Yaeger-Dror, M. (2002). Register and prosodic variation, a cross language comparison. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(10–11), 1495-1536.

• Yaeger-Dror, M., & Hall-Lew, L. (2002). Presidential use of negation. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Symposium about Language and Society—Austin.

• Yaeger-Dror, M., Hall-Lew, L., & Deckert, S. (2002). It's not or isn't it? Using large corpora to determine the influences on contraction strategies. Language Variation and Change, 14(1), 79-118.

• Yaeger-Dror, M., Hall-Lew, L., & Deckert, S. (2003). Situational variation in intonational strategies. Language and Computers, 46(1), 209-224.

Thank you for your attention!

Mirjam Elisabeth Eiswirth MSc Applied Linguistics

s1322502@sms.ed.ac.ukSupervisor: Dr. Lauren Hall-Lew

PGC UoE30th of May 2014