Perceived liveliness and speech comprehensibility in aphasia: the effects of direct speech in auditory narratives

Abstract

This is the first research to demonstrate that communication is perceived as more lively when it contains direct speech than when it does not, but yet is not more comprehensible. Individuals with Broca's and anomic aphasia are known to produce regularly direct speech constructions in elicited narratives. Given that liveliness is known to increase listeners' involvement and to help listeners stay focused, we suggest that this relative increase in direct speech by aphasic speakers may reflect a strategy to increase not only the liveliness of their discourse, but also listener focus and involvement.

The effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch listeners with and without aphasia

“…While there are some exceptions, (e.g., Eerland, Engelen, & Zwaan, 2013;Yao, Belin, & Scheepers, 2011Groenewold, Bastiaanse, Nickels, & Huiskes, 2014), most of these studies have focused on written rather than spoken language. This is surprising, since the distinctive paralinguistic characteristics (e.g., pitch and voice quality, Romaine & Lange, 1991) of direct as compared to indirect speech usually become apparent in spoken language.…”

“…This is surprising, since the distinctive paralinguistic characteristics (e.g., pitch and voice quality, Romaine & Lange, 1991) of direct as compared to indirect speech usually become apparent in spoken language. In addition, the two studies that have used spoken rather than written narratives (Yao et al, 2012;Groenewold et al, 2014) relied on auditory rather than audio-visual stimuli. Therefore, the non-verbal aspects that often play an important role in production and interpretation of direct speech (Goodwin, 1990;Streeck & Knapp, 1992;Wilkinson et al, 2010) did not receive the attention they deserve.…”

Multimodal analysis of quotation in oral narratives

“…Banfield 1982;Li 1986;Tannen 1989;Redeker 1991;Dancygier & Sweetser 2012;Yao et al 2012;Eerland et al 2013;Groenewold et al 2014;Guerini 2014;Pascual 2014, among many others). This interest has stemmed from two observations (1) quotation is ubiquitous in discourse, whether in healthy speaking (Banfield 1982;Tannen 1989;Pascual 2014), healthy signing (Engberg-Pedersen 1993; Metzger 1995) or brain-damaged speaking populations (Berko-Gleason et al 1980;Hengst et al 2005;Groenewold et al 2014), and (2) despite appearances, quotation does not commit the speaker to the veracity of either the form or the content of the quoted utterance (Bakhtin 1981;Clark & Gerrig 1990;Redeker 1991;Sams 2010). Instead, the interactional function -i.e.…”

“…Understanding quoted utterances relies on our ability to fluidly adopt, represent and understand multiple perspectives in ordinary discourse. This is in part because quotation makes the story lively (Groenewold et al 2014) or vivid (Li 1986;Mayes 1990) by creating involvement (Tannen 1989), dramatizing interaction (Labov 1972, Redeker 1991) and stimulating our imagination (Clark & Van Der Wege 2001). At the same time, quoting speakers are often more committed to preserving the intended meaning of a quoted utterance than its form (Lehrer 1989;Redeker 1991;Eerland et al 2013).…”

“…While there are some indications that direct speech is considered to be more lively and vivid than indirect speech (e.g. Li 1986;Groenewold et al 2014) and that this difference might be linked to certain prosodic or paralinguistic features (Yao et al 2012), no links between these findings and multimodal articulation or character embodiment have yet been identified. Our investigation suggests that one way direct speech quotation might accomplish this is through the use of multimodal bodily actions which demonstrate certain aspects of the quoted character.…”