Summary with the article: The communicative functions of paralanguage and prosody van Street (1990).

Sometimes people don’t listen to what you say, but to how you say it. The acoustic elements in speech help listeners to interpret the speakers characteristics and intentions. Non-verbal speech is usually called prosody and paralanguage and has been widely studied in psychology, linguistics and communication sciences. There are four paradigms were studies of non-verbal speech stem from. The first one is that interest in physiology of sound production. This means that researchers study the interrelationships between muscle systems, facial characteristics and the volume. The second one is the study of language attitudes. Researchers have studied correlates of speech styles. An example of this is to see how people evaluate different speck accents. The third paradigm is the study of personal characteristics in vocal behavior. Researchers have found that extraverts pause less than introverts. The last paradigm is the study of the manner in which prosody and paralanguage influence the meaning listeners assign to utterances (as a question or as a statement). In this article non-verbal speech behaviors will be examined from a communicative function perspective.

What is Non-verbal speech?

Non-verbal speech is the acoustical property of communication. Prosody and paralanguage are two popular categories of non-verbal speech. Prosody is the discretely coded non-verbal speech behavior. There are different types of prosodic cues. Stress refers the vocals that are accomplished by loudness and pitch. Center is a form of stress which refers to the peak of vocal prominence. For example, ‘He did what?’ The word ‘what’ is centered. Juncture is also a part of prosody. Juncture refers to pauses, change in pitch and lengthening of syllables. Basically it refers to the elements that break up the rhythm of a sentence. The last types of prosody are pitch height, pitch range and pitch direction. These all refer to the tone and height and level of the voice.

Paralanguage constitutes continuously coded behaviors and includes vocal intensity/loudness, silence/pause, speech duration, fundamental frequency/pitch, switches between speakers and speech rate. The latter refers to the number of words uttered in a certain time frame. Accent can fall both in the paralanguage and prosody category.

Scientist have just started researching the production of paralanguage and prosody. Physiology, arousal and emotion produce non-verbal speech together. When you are aroused, your vocal cords will be constrict and this increases the vocal pitch. Some aspects of the voice can’t be controlled. Facial features determine some qualities of somebody’s voice, but these are hard to control. The aspects that can’t be controlled are called extralinguistic.

For example, males and tall people usually have louder and lower voices than females and small people do. This is because they have an extended vocal tract. They can’t control this and this is the reason why this aspect is extralinguistic. Emotional and affective states, like anger and excitement, can have a big impact on a speaker’s non-verbal speech characteristics. This can happen in two ways. The first way is that emotion and arousal affect the breathing patterns. This has an impact on the vocal cords and the voice characteristics will change when experiencing this emotion or arousal. Arousal can also influence the ability to articulate utterances. When people are aroused, they tend to speak faster and their vocabulary will be diversitated.

adapting communicative style

Although some aspects of non-verbal speech are difficult to control, many are managed or manipulated to serve certain communicative purposes and functions. Some researchers may ask themselves how people are able to manipulate non-verbal speech levels in a matter of milliseconds and without the use of complex cognitive operations. Some researchers think that there exists an integrated hierarchy of cognitive operations that links communicative goals to motor responses of speech and action. Research has also found that communicators adapt their non-verbal speech during the course of an interaction to the other person. They may adapt this towards similarity or convergence as it is called by the scientists or they may adapt this towards differences (divergence). Although speakers may modify their speech to a partner’s behavior and display different communicative styles in different encounters, they usually display a degree of consistency in their non-verbal speech styles.

The question that now arises, is why do communicators adapt their style and speech to that of partners? Research has shown that speech adaptation is related to interaction goals. The reason why communicators adapt their speech is to win approval from the other person or to enhance coherence when communicating with this other person. Speech convergence has been observed in speakers who have a high need for approval, who want to improve the accuracy of communication information and who want to make a good impression on the other. Divergence of speech has been observed in speakers who wanted to dissociate from their interaction partner.

Other research has found that adapting communicative style appears early in life and some say that it is therefore an innate predisposed response set. Often infants adapt the vocal duration, vocal pitch and gaze toward that of their parents. Infants want to adapt their vocal behavior, but can only do so when they acquire linguistics and cognitive skills. The first year of life the infants can’t really communicate with their caregivers. Usually the caregivers are the ones that adapt to the needs of the infant. In the second year of life, the infants learn how to communicate better and they will vocalize more.

Other research also shows that speech adaption is an automatic process. It is a non-conscious process and speakers are often unaware of speech convergence.

That the convergence of speech is an automatic process does not mean that speakers can’t have control on it. Interviewees often show longer speech duration, slower speech rate and fewer interruptions than interviewers do. This is because there is an informal rule in this situation. This usually is the case in power relations and respondents behave in the corresponding way of their role. Communicators try to maintain a certain pattern of speech.

Researchers usually see communicative behavior existing out of different channels. These channels are language, non-verbal behavior, vocalic behavior and subcategories of these three channels. This channel approach is appealing, because it gives researchers the freedom to focus on a particular communicative form. This has enabled researchers to easily study single communicative behavior or a class of communicative behaviors. However, communicators do not behave within one channel. You can study one channel, but this channel may differentiate in combination with other channels. This means that the channel approach has its limitations.

Other researchers have decided to study communicative behavior by examining the collection of responses which accomplish particular functions. Examples of these are social control, intimacy and dominance.

Non-verbal speech contributes to coherence and coordination. Prosodic speech gives the listeners certain cues. These cues function to determine whether a sentence is to be taken literally, which language is stressed and whether the utterance can be taken as sarcasm or a joke. This can all be accomplished in different ways. One of those ways is stress. As mentioned earlier in this article, the change of pitch and loudness draws attention to certain words. Juncture refers to breaks in the linguistic stream and can be achieved by silence and changes in pitch and rate. The function of junction is to break the communication flow into simple units for the listener and to clarify difficult sentences. Vocal exaggeration (exaggerating certain words by speaking louder or prolonging them) is also a way to help the listener determine whether something is meant to be taken literally or not. All these things serve to smoothen the conversation. Researchers have found that speakers who give vocal interpretation cues and who converge with their interaction partner are rated more positive than speakers who do not do this.

There are different non-verbal markers of status, power and control in interactions. There are different patterns that can emerge and these patterns depend on whether communicators are trying to acquire or maintain control. When communicators have no prior expectations regarding each other’s status, they interpret partners who speak louder, faster, interrupt them frequently and talk long as powerful and dominant. If both communicators try to talk more, they may create a competitive pattern. These interactions are usually short because one partner lets the other take over the conversation or just leaves. Interruptions and loud speech draw the attention. Listeners will perceive somebody who speaks louder and more often as dominant, because he or she has drawn the attention towards him or her. Also, people who speak fast are seen as intelligent and confident. Speakers who speak fast are usually seen as more competent and interesting than slow-paced speakers. Communicators of low-status try to impress the dominant speaker and also try to speak faster and with less pausing. The high-status speaker will interrupt others more and take his or her turn when he wants to because he or she thinks that he or she is allowed to do that because of the high-status. Sometimes high-status speakers will speak less often and less loud than others. They think that they have the right to do that because of their status. This will give them even more perceived dominance. By creating style shifts, the listener will become confused and the power of the speaker will be reinforced.

Affiliation and intimacy is usually expressed by slower speech, quieter speech and more pauses. Often the speaker can’t produce the appropriate description of his or her emotions and feelings. By speaking quietly and slower, a certain privacy or seriousness is created. Listeners who also start to speak slower and more quietly then, are perceived as warmer and more attractive.