Abstract
This study explores whether speaker emotion influences communicative
effectiveness. Two hundred participants rated their current emotional state and
gave a description of a route on a simple map. The quality of the linguistic content
of the descriptions was assessed using Latent Semantic Analysis. Six hundred
participants provided route drawings based on the map descriptions. Median
route deviation served as a measure of communicative effectiveness. Eighty additional
participants rated invariant parts of the descriptions for perceived speaker
happiness. Path analysis revealed that while speaker emotion did not affect the
linguistic content of the descriptions, it had an effect on communicative effectiveness
both through the effects of vocal cues directly as well as mediated by perceived
happiness of speech. Specifically, higher first formants were associated
with higher reported and perceived happiness as well as higher communicative
effectiveness. Jitter, on the other hand, was negatively related to the perception of
happiness and positively related to communicative effectiveness. These findings
suggest that mood-related modulation of phonation and articulation can influence
the effectiveness of communication in addition to message content.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 106-119 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Phonetica |
Volume | 62 |
Issue number | 2-4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2005 |