Parasanguage

Paraslanguage (from ancient Greek παρα para , German 'besides' ) denotes all vocal means that accompany language , that is, means linked to sounds that are important for communication . The concept of parasanguage includes various phenomena of non-verbal communication , such as tone of voice, volume, filled ("uh ...") or unfilled pauses, laughing, sighing, the use or avoidance of dialect within the spoken language . According to the communication theory of Paul Watzlawick , the paraslanguage is the relationship aspect of language. A discrepancy between the content aspect (digital signal) and the relationship aspect (analog signal) of speaking is often perceived intuitively.

Characterization of vocal qualities

Vocal qualities mainly include volume, pitch, and speaking speed or rate. The pitch progression or intonation during speaking is called prosody . Prosody corresponds to the speaker's ability to emotionally assess his own utterance. The loss of areas of the brain that are responsible for emotions due to an accident or illness leads to a monotonous way of speaking ( aprosody ) in affected patients .

A completed utterance is signaled with a lowering of the voice: "I told you that". If the speech is to be continued, is the intonation constant or increasing: "I told you that, didn't you understand?" Decision-making questions ("Are you okay?") Are accompanied by an increase, "W questions" (" How are you? ”) Accompanied by a drop in pitch. With the help of such prosodic features and with the help of syntactic features and structural signals, when analyzing sound recordings of spoken language, conclusions can be drawn as to whether utterance units have been completed or not.

Technical methods for representing vocal qualities are indirect; the current generated by the sound pressure in a microphone is amplified. The amplitude of the sound over time can then be displayed in an oscilloscope, with typical curves being created for individual vowels and consonants. In voice spectral analysis, the entire speech sound is divided into frequency bands so that certain frequencies can now be filtered out as fundamental frequencies and harmonics and made visible. However, such voice spectrograms are not always easy to interpret for the layperson. Spectacular examples from literature are the recordings of the voice of a radio reporter in the disaster of the airship "Hindenburg" and the voice recordings of an airplane pilot in his fatal crash.

Language and emotion

An example should clarify the connection between language and emotion: If someone in a threatening situation says with a vibrating voice: “I am not afraid”, the content-related part is overlaid by the emotional part, resulting in an ambivalent situation, mostly in favor of the analog signal is resolved. A potential perpetrator will interpret the signal as “I'm afraid” and will not be put off by his plan.

While we keep our facial expressions and gestures relatively well under control in the event of emotional shocks, by allowing them to freeze at least for a short time, the connection between speaking and emotions is evident. The reason for this is to be found in the physiological prerequisites of sound formation, especially in the role that our vegetative nervous system plays in it. Respiration, the vocal folds of the middle larynx , often referred to as vocal cords in layman's terms, the muscles of the larynx and our jaw muscles, to name just the essentials , are involved in the speech process . The susceptibility to a disturbance of the vegetative equilibrium is already predetermined here. A shift in the basic frequency (often referred to as F ₀ in the literature ) takes place depending on the frequency of the air impulses that reach the vocal tract by opening and closing the vocal folds . The voice becomes shrill when there is strong emotional stress and the trembling leads to interference phenomena : The fundamental frequency is overlaid by harmonics that are perceived as "tremors". A similar phenomenon also occurs in situations in which strong involuntary muscle movements, such as when freezing or having a fever, interfere with speaking (see microprosody ).

Fairbanks and coworkers conducted the following simulation experiment in 1939 and 1941: Actors were asked to express different emotions: anger, fear, sadness, indifference, and contempt. 64 students were asked to assign terms from a list of twelve emotion names to the simulated speech samples; In addition to the emotions shown, the list also contained the following terms: astonishment, doubt, joy, embarrassment, jealousy, love and amusement. The test subjects did not learn that it was a simulation by actors. Indifference (88%), contempt (84%), anger (78%), sadness (78%) and fear (66%) were rated correctly. The change in the mean basic frequency is decisive for the differentiation of the individual emotions, whereby the following relationships seem to exist: the highest mean value in the change in the basic frequency occurs with fear, followed by anger, sadness, contempt and indifference. Fear, contempt, and anger produced the greatest range of variation in the fundamental frequency; Anger showed its greatest rate of change. An examination of the intonation contours suggests that in general more extensive and more rapid changes occurred with anger, while very irregular changes were observed with fear. A consistent vibrato was found with sadness, while with indifference no stable pattern could be found. Stress speeds up the speech rate, depression slows it down extremely, while fear shortens reaction time.

Voice and attribution of personality traits

Attributions based on vocal characteristics are very common, they belong to the "basic equipment" of vulgar psychology. Unless it is a question of voice changes due to illness or drug use, they are mostly faulty and determined by clichés.

The evaluation of people on the basis of vocal qualities plays a role that should not be underestimated in everyday life (think, for example, of "trustworthy" voices or the assumed relationship between body and voice volume or between the type of speaking and intelligence). Nevertheless, for most of the attributions made there is no clearly objectifiable relationship between personality traits and voice quality. Scherer and his co-workers suspect "that especially interpersonal personality traits such as above all extraversion and above all dominance seem to be expressed in the speaking voice". From this, the thesis is derived that corresponding personality influences could be represented in the non-verbal, vocal behavior, which in relation to the verbal and also to the non-vocal non-verbal behavior is considered to be “not very relevant to the goal”, that is, is beyond direct control.

Adaptation and language

Under accommodation is meant basically the adaptation of an organism to the environment. In communication theory, this term describes an often unconscious change in behavior or attitudes that can lead to an adjustment to the interaction partner ( accommodation (linguistics) ). This seems to arise from a generally anchored desire for social integration and identity. The degree of such adaptation allows conclusions to be drawn about the extent to which the interlocutor is accepted or not. Conversely, the willingness or unwillingness to adapt also flows into the assessment of the personality of the interlocutor. An approach to the peculiarities of the partner is called convergence , emphasizing the differences is called divergence .

People change their language style to express acceptance of their values, attitudes and intentions to others. People who meet for the first time often tend to assimilate about different characteristics of their speech behavior. This concerns the communicated content (does the other person understand what I am talking about?), The pronunciation (am I understandable?), The intensity of the voice (how do I appear?), The intimacy of the personal information exchanged and other non-verbal behavior. In normal conversation situations, there is mostly a sympathy advance. Interlocutors adopt the linguistic behavior of the other, which they believe will also be assessed positively by them. Under certain circumstances, this assessment can also turn out to be unfavorable, especially if the listener tries to adopt behavior that is assessed as negative by the speaker himself. Many misunderstandings are possible here, for example if a speaker feels imitated or parodied by his communication partner, although this was not intended. Too much convergence can also be viewed as a disadvantage as giving up one's own identity or as ingratiation.

Divergence is the opposite of convergence. Here the speaker tries to maintain or even emphasize the peculiarity of his own speech behavior symbolically for his own identity, his cultural peculiarity or as an expression of his own value system. In contrast to convergence, in this case the communicative distance is increased instead of decreased, and the basis on which communication can take place shrinks. Divergence can occur as a reaction to failed convergence behavior.

Dialect and emotions

Provided that a dialect speaker is also able to speak the standard language, the use of dialect can be an adaptation of colloquial phrases in the sense of an idiolect (individual language habit) or a more "strategic language" use, for example as "code-shifting" or "code-switching" “, Which means the gradual transition from or switching between standard language and dialect. The dialectisms can also contrast with an otherwise very factual and distant way of speaking. This shows the possibility “by weaving dialect expressions or sentences into a standard language conversation to give his statements a meaning of familiarity and intimacy or local relevance” and thereby “to influence the interaction relationship in the direction of solidarity and emotionalization”.

The eyes are listening

The McGurk effect is the change in the perception of a speech signal while simultaneously observing incongruent lip movements. This experimental situation shows that we do not process individual perceptions. As with other “hallucinations”, it can be seen that our acoustic perceptions are already “calculated” for probability by our cerebral cortex .

See also

• Use of language

literature

• Mechthild Momper: Dialect and Identity. On the subjective significance of a regional phenomenon. Diploma thesis Department of Psychology. Saarbrücken 1984.
• Klaus R. Scherer (Ed.): Vocal communication: non-verbal aspects of speech behavior. Beltz, Weinheim / Basel 1982, ISBN 3-407-54627-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Report from 1937 on youtube
2. ↑ Scherer 1982 (see literature) (exact source is missing!)
3. ^ Howard Giles: Interpersonal Accommodation in Vocal Communication. In: Scherer 1982 (see literature).
4. ↑ Momper, p. 59 (see literature).