The Impact of Rhythmic Distortions in Speech on Personality Assessment

• Authors: Jan Volín , Kristýna Poesová , Radek Skarnitzl
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The perennial question as to how perceived otherness in speech projects into listener assessment of one’s personality has been systematically investigated within the field of foreign accentedness, vocal communication of affective states and vocal stereotyping. In the present study, we aimed at exploring non-native listeners’ capacity to respond to differences in natural and modified native speech, particularly whether the manipulation of temporal structure in both stressed and unstressed syllables gives rise to any changes in the perception of the speaker’s personality. The respondents’ intuitive judgements were captured in the domain of the ‘nervousness category’ taken from the five-factor model of personality. Our results indicate an effect of temporal modifications on the listeners’ judgements. Analysis of variance for repeated measures confirmed a highly significant shift of personality evaluations towards the undesired traits (e.g., nervousness, anxiety, querulousness). Several interesting interactions with the semantic contents of the utterances and with the intrinsic qualities of the speakers’ voices were also found. We argue that the effects of accented speech go beyond conscious willingness to accept “otherness” and suggest a method for studying them.

Keywords

EN

temporal structure; rhythm; neuroticism; perception; stereotype; foreign accent

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 209-216

Dates

published

2014-09-01

online

2014-10-15

Contributors

author

Jan Volín

• Metropolitan University Prague

author

Kristýna Poesová

• Charles University in Prague

author

Radek Skarnitzl

• Charles University in Prague

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rela-2014-0016