The Prosodic Expression of Sarcasm vs. Sincerity by Heritage Speakers of Spanish

Abstract

Motivated by existing research gaps exploring heritage Spanish, the current study analyzes the prosodic manifestation of sarcasm versus sincerity in 19 English-dominant, English-Spanish bilinguals residing in the Midwest region of the USA. In order to explore cross-generational effects and source input varieties, a subset of participants from within the same family was analyzed, including their Spanish-dominant, adult immigrant parents, but only for Spanish. Participants produced sarcastic and sincere utterances in response to contextualized stimuli in both English and Spanish. Data were analyzed for f0 mean, f0 range, and speech rate using Praat. A linear mixed-effects analysis examined the main and interactive effects of language, language dominance, gender, bilingual type, place of birth, and age on sarcasm and sincerity. Results show that sincere speech is faster than sarcastic speech and that speakers have a higher speech rate when speaking English as compared to Spanish. Results show that sincere speech is faster than sarcastic speech and that speakers have a higher speech rate when speaking English compared to Spanish. Results also indicate that the effect of attitude on speech rate can be modified by age, and that the effect of language on speech rate can be modified by age, gender, and dominance, as well as a two-way interactive effect of attitude and language on speech rate. Speaking in Spanish yields a higher f0 mean and range. Results also indicate two-way interactive effects of attitude and bilingual type, and language and dominance on f0 mean and range, as well as a three-way interactive effect of attitude, language, and age on f0 mean. In terms of intrafamilial findings, parents and their adult children pattern the same way in Spanish with respect to speech rate and f0, highlighting the role of source input variety. These results expand our knowledge of how different language experiences and sociolinguistic variables influence prosodic outcomes in heritage speakers of Spanish in the USA.

A Preliminary Exploration of Declarative Intonation in the Chilean Diaspora of Sweden

“…Perhaps the clearest implication of the current study concerns the importance of source input varieties in studies on heritage speakers (Pascual y Cabo and Rothman 2012). 6 The fact that the patterning of word-and phrase-level phonological targets in terms of type, frequency, and frequency-based rankings was so similar across generations supports the notion of intergenerational transmission of minority languages, which Alvord (2009Alvord ( , 2010, Aziz et al (2022), Rao (2016), andRao et al (2022) have addressed in the past for Spanish in North America. While Alvord's (2010) work on Miami Cubans emphasized the role of social networks, he did not limit his agenda to intrafamilial participants.…”

“…As such, Alvord's inclusion of three generations of speakers could potentially be repeated with Chilean Swedes (if we observe evidence that the presence of Spanish, tight-knit nature of the community, sense of identity, etc., are strong enough to maintain their minority language into a third generation), and it would be interesting to see the same trends we report here hold or if increased levels of divergence take place. 7 Additionally, while both Aziz et al (2022) and Rao et al (2022) demonstrate the value of gathering data from speakers within a family, and do so in both English and Spanish, Aziz et al (2022) also show that innovative intonational targets in heritage speakers can emerge based on the cumulative effect of the Spanish source input from parents and the majority language. In order to shed further light on related issues, we would need to expand the current study to include comparable data from Swedish (produced by both our participants and controls) and Spanish (from other adult-immigrant and heritage speakers in Sweden, as well as homeland Chilean and Peninsular Spanish controls).…”

Acoustic Correlates of Subtypes of Irony in Chilean Spanish

“…Bryant 2010). We also expect lower F0 (Rao 2013;Cheang and Pell 2008;Attardo et al 2003) and differences in voice quality (Niebuhr 2014;Cheang and Pell 2008) in sarcastic utterances. Rhetorical questions are one of the subtypes of speech acts used by Gazdik (2022) in her examination of the use of the tag question ¿No?…”

Pengungkapan Seksualitas, Pornografi, dan Prostitusi pada Video Podcast: Kajian Semiotik Budaya (The Phenomena of Sexuality, Pornography, and Prostitution on Vodcasts: Cultural Semiotics Study)

“…Komentar-komentar tersebut juga menunjukkan fenomena budaya tertentu pada masyarakat. Tanggapan penonton video yang positif adalah tanda bahwa penonton (masyarakat) telah terbuka dengan perilaku yang dinyatakan oleh S (Kecskes, 2012;Rao, Ye, Butera., 2022). Masyarakat tidak lagi terlalu memikirkan perilaku seksual S sebagai tindakan yang berlawanan dengan…”