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A crosslinguistic study of the perception of emotional intonation. Influence of the pitch modulations

MoonKyoung Cho, C. and Dewaele, Jean-Marc (2021) A crosslinguistic study of the perception of emotional intonation. Influence of the pitch modulations. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 43 (4), pp. 870-895. ISSN 0272-2631.

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Abstract

Pitch perception plays a more important role in emotional communication in English than in Korean. Interpreting the semantic aspects of pitch levels therefore presents a challenge for Korean learners of English. This study investigated how 49 Korean learners of English perceived 20 English emotional utterances. Participants were asked to complete a congruency task in which they indicated whether the category of the semantic valence was congruent with the intonation type. They also described each emotional utterance by providing an adjective. The task results of Korean participants were compared with those of a control group of 49 Anglo-American students. Statistical analyses revealed that the incongruence between the semantic meaning and the intonation type interfered with American participants’ performance more than Korean participants. The adjective task results also showed that American participants were more attuned to the interplay between the semantic meaning and the intonation type than Korean participants.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
Depositing User: Jean-Marc Dewaele
Date Deposited: 31 Mar 2021 11:02
Last Modified: 28 Jul 2025 08:01
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/43590

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