Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of
meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using techniques such as
prosody,
pitch,
volume
Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). The de ...
,
intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to
nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed
conscious
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
ly or
unconsciously.
The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics and was invented by
George L. Trager
George Leonard Trager (; March 22, 1906 – August 31, 1992) was an American linguist. He was the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1960.
He was born in Newark, New Jersey.
During his years at Yale in the 1930s and 1940s, he was ...
in the 1950s, while he was working at the
Foreign Service Institute
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the United States federal government's primary training institution for employees of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats as well as other professionals to advance U.S. foreig ...
of the U.S.
Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...
. His colleagues at the time included Henry Lee Smith,
Charles F. Hockett
Charles Francis Hockett (January 17, 1916 – November 3, 2000) was an American linguist who developed many influential ideas in American structuralism#Structuralism in linguistics, structuralist linguistics. He represents the post-Leonard Bloomfi ...
(working with him on using
descriptive linguistics as a model for paralanguage),
Edward T. Hall
Edward Twitchell Hall, Jr. (May 16, 1914 – July 20, 2009) was an American anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher. He is remembered for developing the concept of proxemics and exploring cultural and social cohesion, and describing how ...
developing
proxemics, and
Ray Birdwhistell developing
kinesics. Trager published his conclusions in 1958, 1960 and 1961.
His work has served as a basis for all later research, especially those investigating the relationship between paralanguage and culture (since paralanguage is learned, it differs by language and culture). A good example is the work of
John J. Gumperz John Joseph Gumperz (January 9, 1922 – March 29, 2013) was an American linguist and academic. Gumperz was, for most of his career, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research on the languages of India, on code-switching i ...
on language and social identity, which specifically describes paralinguistic differences between participants in intercultural interactions. The film Gumperz made for
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
in 1982, ''Multiracial Britain: Cross talk'', does a particularly good job of demonstrating cultural differences in paralanguage and their impact on relationships.
Paralinguistic information, because it is
phenomena
A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...
l, belongs to the external speech signal (
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
's
''parole'') but not to the arbitrary conmodality. Even
vocal language has some paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be ''seen'' (
lip reading,
McGurk effect), and even ''felt'', e.g. by the
Tadoma method.
Aspects of the speech signal
Perspectival aspects
Speech signals arrive at a listener's ears with acoustic properties that may allow listeners to identify location of the speaker (sensing distance and direction, for example).
Sound localization functions in a similar way also for non-speech sounds. The perspectival aspects of lip reading are more obvious and have more drastic effects when head turning is involved.
Organic aspects
The
speech organs of different speakers differ in size. As children grow up, their organs of speech become larger, and there are differences between male and female adults. The differences concern not only size, but also proportions. They affect the pitch of the
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
and to a substantial extent also the
formant frequencies, which characterize the different
speech sounds
"Speech Sounds" is a science fiction short story by American writer Octavia E. Butler. It was first published in ''Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'' in 1983. It won Butler her first Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1984. The story was subse ...
. The organic quality of speech has a communicative function in a restricted sense, since it is merely informative about the speaker. It will be expressed independently of the speaker's intention.
Expressive aspects
Paralinguistic cues such as loudness, rate, pitch, pitch contour, and to some extent formant frequencies of an utterance, contribute to the emotive or attitudinal quality of an utterance. Typically, attitudes are expressed intentionally and emotions without intention, but attempts to fake or to hide emotions are not unusual.
Consequently, paralinguistic cues relating to expression have a moderate effect of semantic marking. That is, a message may be made more or less coherent by adjusting its expressive presentation. For instance, upon hearing an utterance such as "I drink a glass of wine every night before I go to sleep" is coherent when made by a speaker identified as an adult, but registers a small semantic anomaly when made by a speaker identified as a child. This anomaly is significant enough to be measured through
electroencephalography
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...
, as an
N400. Autistic individuals have a reduced sensitivity to this and similar effects.
Emotional tone of voice
Emotional prosody or affective prosody is the various non-verbal aspects of language that allow people to convey or understand emotion. It includes an individual's tone of voice in speech that is conveyed through changes in pitch, loudness, tim ...
, itself paralinguistic information, has been shown to affect the resolution of
lexical ambiguity
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
. Some words have homophonous partners; some of these homophones appear to have an implicit emotive quality, for instance, the sad "die" contrasted with the neutral "dye"; uttering the sound /dai/ in a sad tone of voice can result in a listener writing the former word significantly more often than if the word is uttered in a neutral tone.
Linguistic aspects
Ordinary
phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
s of utterances reflect only the linguistically informative quality. The problem of how listeners factor out the linguistically informative quality from speech signals is a topic of current research.
Some of the linguistic features of speech, in particular of its
prosody, are paralinguistic or pre-linguistic in origin. A most fundamental and widespread phenomenon of this kind is described by
John Ohala
John Jerome Ohala (July 19, 1941 – August 22, 2020) was a linguist specializing in phonetics and phonology. He was a Professor Emeritus in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Career
He received his PhD in linguistics in 196 ...
as the "frequency code". This code works even in communication across species. It has its origin in the fact that the acoustic frequencies in the voice of small vocalizers are high, while they are low in the voice of large vocalizers. This gives rise to secondary meanings such as "harmless", "submissive", "unassertive", which are naturally associated with smallness, while meanings such as "dangerous", "dominant", and "assertive" are associated with largeness. In most languages, the frequency code also serves the purpose of distinguishing questions from statements. It is universally reflected in expressive variation, and it is reasonable to assume that it has
phylogenetically
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
given rise to the
sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...
that lies behind the large difference in pitch between average female and male adults.
In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
, paralinguistic elements can be displayed by
emoticons, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to misunderstandings.
Specific forms of paralinguistic respiration
Gasps
A gasp is a kind of paralinguistic
respiration in the form of a sudden and sharp
inhalation
Inhalation (or Inspiration) happens when air or other gases enter the lungs.
Inhalation of air
Inhalation of air, as part of the cycle of breathing, is a vital process for all human life. The process is autonomic (though there are exceptions ...
of air through the
mouth
In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on ...
. A gasp may indicate difficulty breathing and a panicked effort to draw air into the lungs. Gasps also occur from an
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
of
surprise,
shock
Shock may refer to:
Common uses Collective noun
*Shock, a historic commercial term for a group of 60, see English numerals#Special names
* Stook, or shock of grain, stacked sheaves
Healthcare
* Shock (circulatory), circulatory medical emerge ...
or
disgust. Like a sigh, a
yawn, or a
moan, a gasp is often an automatic and unintentional act.
[Rachel Broncher, ''A labor of love: a complete guide to childbirth for the mind, body, and soul'' (2004), p. 145.] Gasping is closely related to sighing, and the inhalation characterizing a gasp induced by shock or surprise may be released as a sigh if the event causing the initial emotional reaction is determined to be less shocking or surprising than the observer first believed.
As a symptom of physiological problems,
apneustic respirations
Apneustic respiration ( a.k.a. apneusis) is an abnormal pattern of breathing characterized by deep, gasping inspiration with a pause at full inspiration followed by a brief, insufficient release. Presentation
Accompanying signs and symptoms may inc ...
(a.k.a. apneusis), are gasps related to the brain damage associated with a stroke or other trauma.
Sighs
A sigh is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a deep and especially audible, single
exhalation of air out of the mouth or nose, that humans use to communicate emotion. It is voiced
pharyngeal fricative
A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, ...
, sometimes associated with a guttural glottal breath exuded in a low tone. It often arises from a negative emotion, such as dismay, dissatisfaction, boredom, or futility.
A sigh can also arise from positive emotions such as
relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...
, particularly in response to some negative situation ending or being avoided. Like a gasp, a
yawn, or a
moan, a sigh is often an automatic and unintentional act.
In literature, a sigh is often used to signify that the person producing it is lovelorn.
Scientific studies show that babies sigh after 50 to 100 breaths. This serves to improve the mechanical properties of lung tissue, and it also helps babies to develop a regular breathing rhythm. Behaviors equivalent to sighing have also been observed in animals such as
dog
The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...
s,
monkey
Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...
s, and
horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...
s.
In text messages and internet chat rooms, or in comic books, a sigh is usually represented with the word itself, 'sigh', possibly within
asterisk
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
s, *sigh*.
Sighing is also a reflex, governed by a few
neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...
s.
Moans and groans
Moaning and groaning both refer to an extended guttural sounds emanating from the throat, which typically indicate displeasure, and are made by humans beginning in infancy. Although moaning is associated with pain and suffering, moans may also accompany pleasurable physical experiences such as eating stimulating food, receiving a massage, or engaging in sexual activity. Moans and groans are also noises traditionally associated with
ghost
A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...
s, and their supposed experience of suffering in the afterlife.
The throat-clear
Clearing one's throat is a metamessaging
nonverbal
Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance (proxemic ...
form of
communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
used in announcing one's presence upon entering the room or approaching a group. It is done by individuals who perceive themselves to be of higher rank than the group they are approaching and utilize the throat-clear as a form of communicating this perception to others.
The throat-clear is also used to convey nonverbalized