Program and methodology of cognitively biased auditory research of emotional English speech (coding and decoding of positive emotions)

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Taras Shevchenko National University Ukraine, Kyiv

Program and methodology of cognitively biased auditory research of emotional English speech (coding and decoding of positive emotions)

Inna Krasovskaya

Abstract

Introduction. The article focuses on the new advances in the program and methodology of phonetic experimental research in the cognitive paradigm. It outlines the efficiency of different types of interviewing procedures employed to solve practical tasks of present-day phonetic studies on emotional speech.

Purpose. This paper highlights the major objectives of cognitive phonetic exploits. The article contains a detailed description of methodological background of an auditory analysis of positive emotions realized in English discourse.

Methods. The article rests upon the methodology and procedure of the auditory analysis based on application of different types of interviews.

Results. It lays out scientific evidence calling for a review of a traditional program and methodology applied in auditory analysis and testifies to the productivity of the newly adopted approaches in phonetic studies.

Originality. The article outlines a new cognitively based approach to conducting a phonetic experiment with the aim of giving insight into the mechanisms of speech perception and production.

Conclusion. The paper rests upon the efficacy of a reviewed and updated methodology of a phonetic experiment and sets up new procedures of an auditory analysis in the framework of cognitive studies.

Keywords: phonetic experiment, auditory analysis, methodology, program, suprasegmental units, interview, emotions, informants.

Програма та методологія аудитивного аналізу емоційно насиченого англійського мовлення у когнітивній площині (аналіз кодування та декодування позитивних емоцій)

Інна Красовська

Національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка Україна, м. Київ

Анотація

cognitive linguistics emotional speech

У статті проаналізовано нові підходи до розроблення програми експериментально-фонетичного дослідження, виконаного в площині когнітивної лінгвістики. Актуальність цієї проблеми полягає в тому, що аудитивний аналіз як складник будь-якого експериментально-фонетичного дослідження активно використовується для проникнення в глибини сприйняття та породження мовлення. Обґрунтовано потребу в переформатуванні методологічної бази сучасних фонетичних досліджень емоційного мовлення, метою якого є виявлення глибинних мисленнєвих репрезентацій.

Доведено ефективність фонетичного експерименту для встановлення й аналізу таких репрезентацій, що досліджуються крізь призму вивчення продуктів мовленнєвої діяльності людини. Проілюстровано, що програма аудитивного аналізу відображає синергію методів когнітивістики, психолінгвістики та психоаналізу. Аргументовано доцільність використання різних типів інтерв'ю для досягнення практичних завдань фонетичних досліджень когнітивного напряму. Подано приклади використання структурованих, напівструктурованих та вільних типів інтерв'ю на різних етапах аудитивного аналізу.

Проаналізовано та систематизовано напрями сучасних фонетичних досліджень, які об'єднано з урахуванням таких цілей: виявлення індивідуального стану мовця з огляду на вивчення й аналіз змісту та формальних характеристик мовлення; дослідження звукових та інтонаційних феноменів, пов'язаних з різними комунікативними ситуаціями; аналіз лінгвістичних особливостей психотерапевтичних сесій з метою встановлення ознак норми та відхилення емоційного стану людини; використання продуктів мовленнєвої діяльності як засобів реконструкції прихованих емоційних та психічних станів мовця, а також особливостей його соціальної взаємодії з іншими комунікантами.

У статті описано програму та методологію проведення аудитивного аналізу англійських висловлень на позначення позитивних емоцій щодо встановлення їхніх інтонаційних особливостей, які уможливлюють коректне сприйняття та декодування позитивних емоцій у мовленні, дають уявлення про когнітивні операції, що активуються під час процесу сприйняття. Запропоновано вдосконалену методику проведення аудитивного аналізу із залученням п'яти груп інформантів та нових процедур інтерв 'ювання. Структуровано номенклатуру надсегментних одиниць, які застосовуються для встановлення варіантних та інваріантних моделей інтонування емоційних висловлень в англомовному дискурсі.

Ключові слова: фонетичний експеримент, аудитивний аналіз, методологія, програма, супрасегментні одиниці, інтерв 'ю, емоції, інформанти.

Програма и методология аудитивного анализа емоционально насищеной английской речи в когнитивной парадигме (анализ кодирования и декодирования позитивных эмоций)

Инна Красовская

Национальный университет имени Тараса Шевченка Украина, г. Киев

Аннотация

В статье анализируются новые подходы к разработке программы и методологической базы современных экспериментально-фонетических исследований, которые проводятся в русле когнитологии. Обоснована необходимость и эффективность использования разных типов интервью для эффективного проведения аудитивного анализа экспериментального материала. В статье структурированы основные направления современных экспериментально-фонетических исследований, которые объединяют определенные практические задачи. Представлена и детально описана процедура и усовершенствованная методология проведения аудитивного анализа эмоционально насыщенной английской речи, которая дает возможность выявить и проанализировать супрасегментные единицы оформления позитивных эмоций в речи.

Ключевые слова: фонетический эксперимент, аудитивный анализ, методология, программа, супрасегментные единицы, интервью, эмоции, информанты.

Introduction

Contemporary phonetic experiments carried out in the cognitive framework give insight into cognitive structures that are formed in the mentality of a speaker as the result of the interaction with the social environment. These cognitive structures are viewed as meaningful representations of external and internal environments that are molded under the influence of affective mechanisms of mind being revealed as sensations of a speaker triggered by certain events, realia or other external incentives [1, p. 43-44]. Nomenclature of these representations is ever-changing mirroring the present state of speaker's mentality [8, p. 4-10]. Nowadays, exploration of the results of communicative activity enables the researchers to penetrate into the intricacy of the meaningful structures of human mentality. It explains the fact of applying auditory analysis as an indispensable part of linguistic experiment, aiming at surveying and explaining the peculiarities of speech production and perception [17, p. 227-229].

The aim of this article is to define and envisage the major issues to be taken into consideration while working out the program of the phonetic experimental research into emotional English speech and describing its methodology in the framework of cognitive paradigm of contemporary scientific studies.

Topicality

It is noteworthy to point out that present-day phonetic explorations reflect the synergy of various scientific methods pertaining to cognitive science, psycholinguistics and psychoanalysis. Moreover, auditory and acoustic experiments give valuable data explaining the emergence of meaningful cognitive structures reflecting logical and emotional facets of human mentality. At present, phoneticians are challenged to build up the inventory of phonetic models through transformations being formed on the basis of cognitive operations of decoding the salient features of speech that are triggered by acoustic clues (fundamental frequency, intensity, duration) [13; 15]. Thus, the new horizons to be achieved in the course of experimental survey into emotional speech poses new problems and defines brand-new goals that are likely to be attained by reviewing and reformulating the methodological principles of the phonetic experiments.

Methodological background of the research

The aim of any auditory and acoustic research is to verify and prove a scientific hypothesis and theoretical background of the survey. Traditionally, any phonetic experiment follows a number of steps, such as:

selecting experimental data corpus;

analyzing the auditory clues of the experimental data by phoneticians;

acoustic analysis of the temporal, dynamic and melodic parameters of the selected data;

summing up and interpreting the obtained experimental results.

However, we believe that this standard procedure of the experimental phonetic study has been undergoing dramatic transformation since the time the focus of linguistics shifted on the cognitive mechanisms that constitute the background for decoding and coding the information processed by a speaker. It is evident that phonetic experiments engage elements of dialogue analysis aiming at reconstructing cognitive operations and rules employed to build up the model of tit-a-tat communication [16]. Further on, this model is viewed as the background against which more complicated interaction scripts emerge reflecting some conventional reactions of a speaker in response to external incentives: their positive or negative assessment [9; 14]. Besides, giving insight into the thematic bias of the communicative activity and its relation to realization of the emotions during communication contributes to modeling and systemizing these complicated interaction structures [13; 15].

Sticking to the fact that contemporary cognitively-biased phonetic studies approach the communicative activity as the «representation of deep content» that emerges as the result of synthesizing and analyzing speaker's expertise (both logical and emotional), we can single out a number of trends that have been united under the auspice of common objectives:

researching an individual emotional state of a speaker through the study of content and perceptual features of communicative activity [6; 7];

exploiting sound and intonation parameters related to different communicative situations [9];

interpreting the results of psychoanalytical sessions to define the parameters of emotional norm and deviation [10; 11];

reconstructing hidden emotional and psychological states as well as peculiarities of social adaptation and interaction through the analysis of communicative activity [3].

Methodology of the contemporary phonetic experiments has been enriched by the methods applied in conflictology. In this framework, phoneticians use the methods of defining dissonances (conflicts) between reality and nomenclature of human values triggering a certain feedback to a number of incentives during interaction of a speaker with reality [10, p. 20-23]. On the other hand, viewing the utterances as the products gained in the result of the role-relations between participants of communication, a nomenclature of cognitive structures reflecting this role-patterned interaction is analyzed by the method, known as Role Relation Configuration Model [11]. The application of this model enables researches to build up and describe intonation patterns of different communicative scripts, as well as cognitive operations of their production and perception that explain the mechanisms of controlling and non-controlling the outburst of emotions in the course of communication.

It has been mentioned above that the program of a traditional auditory analysis involves professional phoneticians who are to define the salient perceptive features of the experimental data. Notwithstanding the fact, aiming at solving practical tasks of a cognitively-biased auditory survey, scientists have to broaden the group of informants - inviting psychologists; native speakers who are professional linguists; therapists, professional actors [7, p. 65-70]. Besides, an interview, as a method of verbal communication between an experimenter and an informant, becomes vital to continuously guide and correct an experimental procedure [1, p. 45-50]. Depending on practical tasks solved via interview and approaches to its structural composition, the following types may be singled out [4; 12]:

structured interviews - the questions are supplemented with a multiple-choice answer;

semi-structured interviews - informants are instructed to give answers in a free way;

free interviews - informants are motivated to share their opinion, express their attitude or comment on the suggested pieces of the experimental data.

Our survey shows that contemporary phonetic research employs several types of interview with the purpose of completing practical tasks of giving insight into the structure of intonation patterns viewed as meaningful mental structures. Thus, a structured interview is an essential tool to work with professional phoneticians who are suggested to give answers to an array of clear-cut questions with the aim to define such intonation parameters as [6, p. 70-71; 66]: 1) type of syllable accentuation (1.1. unaccented, 1.2. semi-accented, 1.3. accented, 1.4. strongly accented); 2) type of intonation scale (2.1. descending stepping scale, 2.2. descending broken stepping scale, 2.3. descending sliding scale, 2.4. descending scandent, 2.5. ascending, 2.6. level high, medium, low); 3) type of terminal tone (3.1. falling, 3.2. rising, 3.3. falling-rising, 3.4. rising-falling, 3.5. level); 4)pitch level (4.1. extra high, 4.2. high, 4.3. medium high, 4.4. medium low, 4.5. low, 4.6. extra low); 5)pitch range (5.1. broad, 5.2. medium, 5.3. semi-narrow, 5.4. narrow); 6) interval (6.1. positive-broad, expanded, medium, semi-narrow, narrow; 6.2. negative-broad, expanded, medium, semi-narrow, narrow); 7) rate (7.1. fast, 7.2. semi-fast, 7.3. normal, 7.4. slowed, 7.5. slow); 8)pauses (8.1. broken, 8.2. short, 8.3. long, 8.4. extra-long, 8.5. unbroken); 9) volume (9.1. high, 9.2. semi-high, 9.3. normal, 9.4. semi-low, 9.5. low).

We believe that working out the methodology of a phonetic experiment on emotional speech is essential while considering the peculiarities of speech perception. It preconditions the involvement of native speakers as a separate group of respondents. This approach enables to explore parameters of sound representations as well as describe cognitive mechanisms of coding and decoding suprasegmental units [2, p. 73]. Moreover, native speakers give invaluable information on how emotions are realized in speech as perception of sound information is viewed to be the main criterion of adequately recognized emotions. These data enable phoneticians to define the most typical linguistic and cognitive laws contributing to prosodic embodiment of emotions in communication [17, p. 90-96].

In this respect it is worth while mentioning the results of experimental research into perception of positive and negative emotions in speech and music carried out by N. Cook [13] that testifies the diffusion in decoding of these emotions dependent on different abilities of a speaker to perceive an intonation pattern of an utterance and correlate it with a certain emotion expressed in communication. The scientist stresses that «emotional hearing» of a person develops under the influence of activity pertaining to different hemispheres of a human brain responsible for either logical or artistic type of mentality [13, p. 100-101].

The last but not the least parameter of a successful experimental research in a cognitive paradigm is the appropriate selection of speakers who produce utterances for the experimental corpus. It is of paramount importance to consider the following characteristics of the speaker engaged in the experiment: standard pronunciation; orthoepy awareness; excellent imitation skills of different emotional states. The research of K. Scherer proves that professional actors are ideal candidates to meet the demands envisaged above [17, p. 90-91], because they have enough expertise to generalize linguistic and paralinguistic parameters to adequately realize emotions in speech to be recognizable by an average recipient.

Results

Taking into consideration the theoretical background of present-day cognitively-biased phonetic studies of emotional speech, we have worked out a comprehensive program and methodology of auditory analysis of emotional speech with the objective to define suprasegmental units reflecting the typical features of decoding and coding positive emotions in communication [7, p. 63-75]. Our auditory analysis was preceded by the selection of the sufficient experimental corpus, containing 1239 emotionally-charged English utterances being realized by profession actors as their intonation is close to a natural speech production.

Guided by the objective of the auditory analysis to define variant and invariant suprasegmental units, relevant for decoding and coding positive emotions in speech, the experimental utterances have been classified according to the type of positive emotions into the ones, expressing joy, triumph, adoration and elation. To complete the practical tasks of the experiment, auditory analysis involved 5 groups of informants. The first group was represented by the professional psychologists who have enough experience of collaborating with different psychological types of personalities. They were interviewed to summarize their verbal description of emotionally charged situations.

The second group of informants was constituted by 30 native speakers from Great Britain and the USA, selected in conformity with such demands as: degree in linguistics, skills of listening and comprehension. At this stage of the research the native speakers were to define the type of a positive emotion, realized in each selected utterance. They were offered to tick the decoded emotion in a special questionnaire. Besides, this group of respondents were interviewed to give clear-cut, structured answers as to the perceptual qualities, enabling them to decode an emotion, that involved such intonation parameters as: rate (fast, normal, slow); volume (high, normal, low); pauses (filled, unfilled). The utmost attention was devoted to analyzing how sincere the emotions are expressed in each situation and defining their adequacy to the situation in question.

The third group of informants was constituted by the students of the linguistic department at Kyiv National Linguistic University (37 people) whose task was to define the type of emotion expressed and single out the perceptual clues of each emotion out of the suggested list. This group was engaged to exploit some universal suprasegmental units enabling even non-native speakers to decode emotions in the communication. The fourth group of respondents, composed by 7 native speakers, were asked to describe the paralinguistic tools of expressing different positive emotions, pursing the objective to find out certain proximity between paralinguistic behavior and suprasegmental units employed to code positive emotions. At the final stage of the auditory experiment, professional phoneticians were invited to analyze the experimental corpus to give an expert assessment of intonational parameters characteristic of each emotionally charged utterance. They were requested to tick the appropriate type of a suprasegmental unit being outlined above as the methodological basis of our experiment.

Conclusions

Summing up, it is noteworthy to point out that an interview in all its forms has become a critical tool of the present-day cognitively biased phonetic research as it allows to understand the nature of meaningful mental representations mirroring emotional and logical expertise of a speaker. Our auditory analysis has enabled us to build up a certain framework of emotional scripts in different communicative situations, single out salient perceptual clues of decoding emotions. We have also obtained the nomenclature of suprasegmental units pertaining to realization of the positive emotions under analysis which have been further researched during the acoustic analysis. Thus, the program and methodology of the auditory research, presented in this article, has proven to be effective to define variable and invariable intonation patterns of emotional speech as well as to effectively select a verified corpus for acoustic and statistic analyses.

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