Intonational variation in third party complaints in Spanish

Rajiv Rao

doi:10.20396/joss.v3i1.15042

Abstract

Very little previous research has addressed the prosodic characteristics of third party complaints. This paper discusses an utterance and word level intonational analysis of this speech act in four speakers of Mexican Spanish. The effect of social distance/ power relationships was incorporated into the study by creating an experimental data elicitation task in which participants addressed identical complaints to a friend, as well as a boss, based on a series of hypothetical contexts. Major global findings revealed that all speakers significantly increased their fundamental frequency (F0) mean when directing their complaints to friends, however, only two speakers significantly expanded their F0 range in the same circumstance. Locally, peaks and valleys were manifested at significantly higher levels across the board when addressing friends. Finally, while speakers produced complaint contours of similar overall shape regardless of hearer, individual variation was present in the form of circumflex versus suppressed utterance-final F0 configurations. Overall, the relatively small data set initiated preliminary thoughts on the application of both cross-linguistic and language- and dialect-specific intonational concepts to complaints while also emphasizing the importance of relationships between interlocutors for future studies.

Highlights

Background on Complaints Complaints are expressive speech acts used to verbally communicate displeasure, dissatisfaction, or frustration toward the actions of a hearer or a third party that has shown a violation in social competence in a way that negatively affects the speaker. [1,2,3,4] In terms of their formulation, complaints, similar to any speech act, largely depend on distance and power relationships between interlocutors. [3, 5, 6] Relationships affect the level of directness when voicing a complaint, as well as appropriate strategies hearers can use as responses to either pacify the speaker or defend his/her own social competence. [1]
F0 Mean Examining the manifestations of F0 at the utterance level for BDCs and FDCs has implications for the expression of emotion based on relationships between interlocutors, as well as how the effect of these relationships adds to existing classifications of third party complaints
The main goal of collecting a data set targeting the influence of disparities in social distance and power between interlocutors on the production of third party complaints in this study was twofold: i. on a cross-linguistic level, to elucidate phonetic differences created when voicing displeasure against a third party; ii. on a language- specific level, to contribute to the discussion on the curious pragmatic distinctions caused by producing circumflexion versus final lowering in Mexican Spanish

Summary

Introduction

Complaints are expressive speech acts used to verbally communicate displeasure, dissatisfaction, or frustration toward the actions of a hearer or a third party that has shown a violation in social competence in a way that negatively affects the speaker. [3, 5, 6] Relationships affect the level of directness when voicing a complaint, as well as appropriate strategies hearers can use as responses to either pacify the speaker or defend his/her own social competence. A follow-up study extends these ideas by including the phonetic consequences of A-complaints with both affiliative and non-affiliative responses, as well as ways in which hearers use F0 increases of words and phrases as strategies to repair identified problems. A follow-up study extends these ideas by including the phonetic consequences of A-complaints with both affiliative and non-affiliative responses, as well as ways in which hearers use F0 increases of words and phrases as strategies to repair identified problems. [14]

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Conclusion