Influence of Verbal Content and Intonation on Meaning Attributions of First- and Second-Language Speakers

Abstract

Summary Perceptions of a series of recorded verbal evaluation statements comprising all combinations of three levels of content (positive, neutral, negative) and three levels of intonation (pleased, indifferent, displeased) were obtained from groups of adolescents in America and India. The recorded statements were all in English, a second language for the Indian subjects. The major finding was that the Indians were more likely to rely on content for judgments of affective meaning, while the Americans relied relatively more on intonation for judgments of affective meaning. This finding was attributed to differences in amount of experience with the language. It was also found that the American girls were generally more responsive to intonation than the American boys, while the Indian boys were more responsive to intonation than the Indian girls.