Phonetic correlates of stance-taking

Abstract

Stance, or a speaker’s attitudes or opinions about the topic of discussion, has been investigated textually in conversation- and discourse analysis and in computational models, but little work has focused on its acoustic-phonetic properties. This is a difficult problem, given that stance is a complex activity that must be expressed along with several other types of meaning (informational, social, etc.) using the same acoustic channels. In this presentation, we begin to identify some acoustic indicators of stance in natural speech using a corpus of collaborative conversational tasks which have been hand-annotated for stance strength (none, weak, moderate, and strong) and polarity (positive, negative, and neutral). A preliminary analysis of 18 dyads completing two tasks suggests that increases in stance strength are correlated with increases in speech rate and pitch and intensity medians and ranges. Initial results for polarity also suggest correlations with speech rate and intensity. Current investigations center on local modulations in pitch and intensity, durational and spectral differences between stressed and unstressed vowels, and disfluency rates in different stance conditions. Consistent male/female differences are not yet apparent but will also be examined further.