A preliminary study on the prosody of broadcast news in Hong Kong Cantonese

Mok, Peggy P. K.; Fung, Holly Sze Ho; Li, Jingwen

doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2014-204

Cited by 2 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…However, the news speaking style seems to prevail over the language itself (Iivonen et al, 1995). A similar pattern has been found in Australian English (Price, 2008), Swedish (Strangert, 2005), Portuguese (Castro et al, 2010), Russian (Oleinik, 2006), Spanish (Rodero Antón, 2013), Polish (Francuz, 2010), or Cantonese (Mok et al, 2014), to cite some examples.…”

supporting

confidence: 56%

“…Although some authors have described the broadcasting style as inappropriate or strange (Bolinger, 1998;Francuz, 2010;Nihalani & Lin, 1998;Oleinik, 2006;Rodero Antón, 2013;Strangert, 1991;Wheatley, 1949), it is undeniably the standard in the industry. The broadcasting style is a commonplace way to convey the news, widespread across countries and languages (Castro et al, 2010;Francuz, 2010;Mok et al, 2014;Oleinik, 2006;Price, 2008;Rodero Antón, 2013;Strangert, 2005), so it has become a very recognizable pattern by listeners (Escudero et al, 2017;Gasser et al, 2019;Medrado et al, 2005). It is important to note that the audience does not listen to different features (e.g., intonation or speech rate) in an isolated way but all together in a defined style.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A study examining 24 radio news bulletins confirmed the presence of a regular intonation with an abundance of circumflex contours sustained by a high pitch level (Rodero Antón, 2013). Mok et al (2014) added greater pitch variability to these elements when they compared newscasters with students reading aloud. Finally, Nissen et al (2020) compared broadcasters with the general population and found that professionals exhibit an elevated mean pitch, more pitch variability, and a wider range.…”

Section: Intonationmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In general, the media problem (news and advertising) is that the speech rate tends to be fast and has short pauses (Castro et al, 2010;Cotter, 1993). For instance, Shevchenko and Uglova (2006) registered an average speech rate for English TV news at 207 wpm, Mok et al (2014) found a fast speech rate in Cantonese news, Castro et al (2010) in Portuguese newscasters, and Finkelstein and Amir (2013) in Hebrew professional radio.…”

Section: Speech Ratementioning

confidence: 99%

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Best Prosody for News: A Psychophysiological Study Comparing a Broadcast to a Narrative Speaking Style

Rodero

Cores-Sarría

2021

Communication Research

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Studies in different languages have identified a broadcast speaking style, a particular manner that broadcasters have of reading news. This speaking style is characterized by an emphatic intonation with a fast speech rate easily recognizable by listeners. Some authors have stated that messages in this style are not positively perceived by listeners, as it is repetitive and regular, but there is no empirical data to support this conclusion, nor has the style been analyzed with physiological measures. The physiological approach has some advantages, such as a more objective assessment and real-time evaluation. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effectiveness, adequacy, and physiological response of this broadcast style compared to a narrative pattern. We combined self-report with physiological measures. Fifty-six participants listened to six news pieces in both styles and with two voices, male and female. They had to rate the effectiveness and adequacy of the news while we measured their physiological responses (heart rate and electrodermal activity). The results showed that news conveyed through the broadcast style elicited less cognitive resource allocation and emotional arousal than the narrative pattern, but there were no significant differences in self-report evaluations.

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supporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Intonationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Speech Ratementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Best Prosody for News: A Psychophysiological Study Comparing a Broadcast to a Narrative Speaking Style

Rodero

Cores-Sarría

2021

Communication Research

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“…This result may be due to differences in timing properties between the two languages. English is stress-timed, while Mandarin is syllable-timed [ 48 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warning: Humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes

et al. 2023

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Speech deepfakes are artificial voices generated by machine learning models. Previous literature has highlighted deepfakes as one of the biggest security threats arising from progress in artificial intelligence due to their potential for misuse. However, studies investigating human detection capabilities are limited. We presented genuine and deepfake audio to n = 529 individuals and asked them to identify the deepfakes. We ran our experiments in English and Mandarin to understand if language affects detection performance and decision-making rationale. We found that detection capability is unreliable. Listeners only correctly spotted the deepfakes 73% of the time, and there was no difference in detectability between the two languages. Increasing listener awareness by providing examples of speech deepfakes only improves results slightly. As speech synthesis algorithms improve and become more realistic, we can expect the detection task to become harder. The difficulty of detecting speech deepfakes confirms their potential for misuse and signals that defenses against this threat are needed.

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A preliminary study on the prosody of broadcast news in Hong Kong Cantonese

Cited by 2 publications

References 11 publications

Best Prosody for News: A Psychophysiological Study Comparing a Broadcast to a Narrative Speaking Style

Best Prosody for News: A Psychophysiological Study Comparing a Broadcast to a Narrative Speaking Style

Warning: Humans cannot reliably detect speech deepfakes

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