Linguistics doctoral student Suyuan Liu will give an in-person Linguistics Outside the Classroom colloquium.
What do you hear when you listen? Effects of para-linguistic information on speech processing in Mandarin–English bilinguals
Imagine overhearing someone say in a raspy voice, “I really need some CAWFEE.” Beyond their craving for caffeine, what else comes across? Perhaps they are from Boston, they are tired, or maybe even that they might smoke. Speech conveys not only linguistic meaning but also para-linguistic information, such as social and physiological cues about the speaker. How these layers of information interact during speech processing remains an open question. My dissertation approaches this question through two para-linguistic factors – (1) perceived language standardness and (2) voice similarity between speakers and listeners – and their influence on intelligibility. Do we understand someone more easily when that person speaks in a “standard” way, or when their voice sounds more like our own? Does this match our beliefs?
Through creation and analysis of the Mandarin–English Language Interview (MELI) Corpus, findings show that the intelligibility effects of “standardness” are language-dependent: they enhance speech intelligibility in listeners’ English (L2) but not in their Mandarin (L1) – contrary to what listeners themselves believe. Voice similarity between speakers and listeners, though rarely noticed or reported, consistently improves intelligibility across both languages. Ultimately, para-linguistic information does interfere with how linguistic information is understood – but not always in the ways our social beliefs predict. True listening, it seems, starts when we stop hearing only what we expect.
