On “Whistle” Sound Objects in English Everyday Conversation

Abstract

In this paper we study the forms and functions of whistling in social interaction (see also Reber, 2012;Reber & Couper-Kuhlen, 2010). Our analysis identifies two basic forms of conversational whistling, 1) melodic whistling, when participants whistle the tune of, e.g., a familiar song, and 2) non-melodic whistling. The focus in this paper lies on non-melodic whistles, which come in two contours linked to specific actions: a) the tonal whistle deployed for summoning (e.g., a domestic animal but also human participants) and b) the gliding whistle used for affect-laden responses to informings that breach a norm, often ones containing a numerical reference. The pitch contour used on the latter type of whistle matches those found for more lexical sound objects, e.g., "oh", "ah", and "wow". The data base for the study comprises a wide range of audio and video recordings of mundane American and British English telephone and face-to-face conversations.

Parental lip-smacks during infant mealtimes

“…The analysis presented here contributes to a number of research fields. First, it develops work on non-lexical sounds, providing further evidence that these are intricately co-ordinated with bodily movements and concerns in social interaction (Keevallik, 2018;Keevallik & Ogden, 2020;Reber & Couper-Kuhlen, 2020). Our focus was on the repetitiveness and rhythmicality of the lip-smacks and the relevance of LS chains for creating mutual engagement with an embodied practice such as eating.…”

“…Lip-smacks are a label we use in this study to refer to a group of sounds that are produced by pushing the lips together and then pulling them apart with a deliberate motion, in combination with a tongue movement, resulting in labial, dental, or alveolar click sounds with occasional vocal elements immediately preceding or following, or forming a semi-conventionalized item, such as a nyom/nom. They constitute a sound object, i.e., "conversational objects with minimal semantic content" (Reber, 2012: 12) even while including functionally similar and articulatorily different items (see Reber & Couper-Kuhlen, 2020, on whistles). While clicks have been the focus of phonetic and prosodic research (e.g., Ladefoged & Triall, 1994;Ogden, 2013, Wright 2011a), research into lip-smacks as a functional object has to date been surprisingly limited.…”

Sounds on the Margins of Language at the Heart of Interaction

“…Some observable vocalizations are not known to exist in the words of any language but are nonetheless describable in phonetic terms: snores (ingressive, oro-nasal pulmonic velar trills) are one such sound. Others, like labial whistles (Reber & Couper-Kuhlen, 2020/this issue), sighs (Hoey, 2014), or laughter (Glenn & Holt, 2013), have no conventional phonetic description. Some vocalizations, like clicks, are considered linguistic in some languages -limited to Southern Africa, where they occur in words-but not in others, including English and Mandarin (Li, 2020/this issue;Ogden, 2013Ogden, , 2020, where they are normally considered to be paralinguistic (Gil, 2013).…”