Bringing indexical orders to non-arbitrary meaning: The case of pitch and politeness in English and Korean

dc.contributor.authorHolliday, Jeffrey J.en
dc.contributor.authorWalker, Abbyen
dc.contributor.authorJung, Mihyunen
dc.contributor.authorCho, Estheren
dc.date.accessioned2023-03-24T18:52:12Zen
dc.date.available2023-03-24T18:52:12Zen
dc.date.issued2023-02en
dc.description.abstractIn this study, we investigated whether the relationship between pitch and politeness is mediated through iconic relationships between pitch and other talker attributes, and whether these relationships can differ across languages. US and South Korean listeners completed a speaker perception task in which they heard utterances and rated the speaker on a number of attributes, including politeness. The pitch of each utterance was unmanipulated, raised, or lowered. The results confirm previous work suggesting that in Korean, lower pitch is associated with politeness, which contrasts with both the English results we find, and claims of a universal association between higher pitch and politeness (i.e., Ohala's Frequency Code). At the same time, the impact of pitch on attributes like perceived height, strength, and emotion are similar across listener groups: Speakers in higher pitched guises are heard as shorter, weaker, and more emotional. Like others, we argue that pitch can be associated, non-arbitrarily, with a range of meanings, but additionally appeal to orders of indexicality (Silverstein, 2003) to account for the similarities between the groups, as well as the differences. Our results are of significance for researchers looking at non-arbitrary meaning of acoustic cues as well as the acoustics of politeness, especially in interaction with polite registers in Korean.en
dc.description.versionPublished versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.16995/labphon.9112en
dc.identifier.eissn1868-6354en
dc.identifier.issue1en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/114176en
dc.identifier.volume14en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUbiquity Pressen
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
dc.subjectVocal expressionen
dc.subjectspeechen
dc.subjectjapaneseen
dc.subjectperceptionsen
dc.subjectdeferenceen
dc.subjectprosodyen
dc.titleBringing indexical orders to non-arbitrary meaning: The case of pitch and politeness in English and Koreanen
dc.title.serialLaboratory Phonologyen
dc.typeArticle - Refereeden
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten

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