“Softened” voice quality in poetry reading and listener response

Gafni, Chen; Tsur, Reuven

doi:10.1075/ssol.5.1.03tsu

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Besides the numerous studies comparing pitch production in speech and song, few studies have investigated the differences between speech and song with regard to other features such as vocal quality (Lundy et al, 2000 ; Livingstone et al, 2014 ; Gafni and Tsur, 2015 ), tension or articulation. In order to describe the peculiarities in spoken and sung signals (by applying acoustical analyses to the vocalization), a crucial step consists of understanding what is relevant to listeners when perceiving vocalizations as either speech or song.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocal Features of Song and Speech: Insights from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire

Merrill

Larrouy-Maestri

2017

Front. Psychol.

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Similarities and differences between speech and song are often examined. However, the perceptual definition of these two types of vocalization is challenging. Indeed, the prototypical characteristics of speech or song support top-down processes, which influence listeners' perception of acoustic information. In order to examine vocal features associated with speaking and singing, we propose an innovative approach designed to facilitate bottom-up mechanisms in perceiving vocalizations by using material situated between speech and song: Speechsong. 25 participants were asked to evaluate 20 performances of a speechsong composition by Arnold Schoenberg, “Pierrot lunaire” op. 21 from 1912, evaluating 20 features of vocal-articulatory expression. Raters provided reliable judgments concerning the vocal features used by the performers and did not show strong appeal or specific expectations in reference to Schoenberg's piece. By examining the relationship between the vocal features and the impression of song or speech, the results confirm the importance of pitch (height, contour, range), but also point to the relevance of register, timbre, tension and faucal distance. Besides highlighting vocal features associated with speech and song, this study supports the relevance of the present approach of focusing on a theoretical middle category in order to better understand vocal expression in song and speech.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vocal Features of Song and Speech: Insights from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire

Merrill

Larrouy-Maestri

2017

Front. Psychol.

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“…Because publications with historical concerns are far rarer than would be desired, this is a welcome volume although, just as in Smith’s (2015) book above, the various analyses are informed by literary rather than prototypically stylistic interests. One other publication on aspects related to ‘voice’ is Gafni and Tsur (2015). They focus on the actual, physical voice of poetry performers and employ an empirical methodology to test listeners’ perception of the ‘softened’ voice often adopted in poetry readings.…”

Section: Poetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

The year’s work in stylistics 2015

Montoro

2016

Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

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Writing the 'Year's work in stylistics' is both enlightening and humbling. It is enlightening because it enables me to learn about the varied research that people have devoted time and effort to in the past year; it is also enlightening because some of that work falls off one's most immediate stylistics research radar and, thus, it is relatively easy to be unacquainted with it. It is humbling, first, because of the sheer amount and the quality of such work; but it is also humbling because it allows you to learn about the rich crossfertilisation between disciplines which most stylistics work is characterised by. In what follows I would like to share my own enlightening and humbling experience with those readers who, like me, want to learn about the abundant and varied work in stylistics in 2015. I review publications in cognate disciplines alongside those situated in the more familiar stylistics camp, and consider how the latter draw upon and expand on the former. This inter-connection can also be seen in the way I organise the following sections, which primarily has a hermeneutic function. As will be seen, some of the work described in the computer-assisted section could also be discussed under the multimodality heading, for instance, so I highlight this cross-fertilisation as much as I can. Finally, regular readers of Language and Literature will be aware of the following remark which I am, nevertheless, drawing attention to for the sake of the newcomers to the journal: the 'References' section does not list any of the articles published in this journal so that selfcitation does not have a negative effect on our impact factor. Readers are, however, strongly encouraged to check and, of course, cite these articles in their own work fully.The famous motto 'All for one and one for all' summarises the spirit of Alexandre Dumas's main characters in The Three Musketeers. If I am allowed a daring analogy, The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics (Burke, 2014) and The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics (Stockwell and Whiteley, 2014), like Athos and Porthos respectively, united their voices in 2014 to 'defend' the stylistics cause. It was about time that Aramis,

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“… 4 Referring in particular to Wiseman and Van Peer (2003) as well as to Fónagy (1961) and the contradictory results of these studies, Tsur (2012; see also Gafni and Tsur, 2015) offers an explanative interpretation from a perspective that takes into account the acoustic dimension of speech. In this opinion, “plosives are adequate for expressing both joy and aggressiveness, because the phonetic structure of plosives resembles the aesthetic structure of joyful and aggressive emotions” (Gafni and Tsur, 2015, p. 51), while nasals can express grief as well as tender moods.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In this opinion, “plosives are adequate for expressing both joy and aggressiveness, because the phonetic structure of plosives resembles the aesthetic structure of joyful and aggressive emotions” (Gafni and Tsur, 2015, p. 51), while nasals can express grief as well as tender moods. Since this interpretation, however, is not based on empirical data, the reported contradictions remain unresolved.…”

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confidence: 99%

Mimological Reveries? Disconfirming the Hypothesis of Phono-Emotional Iconicity in Poetry

Kraxenberger

2016

Front. Psychol.

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The present study retested previously reported empirical evidence suggesting an iconic relation between sound and emotional meaning in poetry. To this end, we analyzed the frequency of certain phoneme classes in 48 German poems and correlated them with ratings for emotional classification. Our analyses provide evidence for a link between the emotional classification of poems (joyful vs. sad) and the perception of tonal contrast as reflected in the attribution of phenomenological sound qualia (bright vs. dark). However, we could not confirm any of the previous hypotheses and findings regarding either a connection between the frequencies of occurrence of specific vowel classes and the perception of tonal contrast, or a relation between the frequencies of occurrence of consonant classes and emotional classification.

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“Softened” voice quality in poetry reading and listener response

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

Vocal Features of Song and Speech: Insights from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire

Vocal Features of Song and Speech: Insights from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire

The year’s work in stylistics 2015

Mimological Reveries? Disconfirming the Hypothesis of Phono-Emotional Iconicity in Poetry

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