Prosody of Preferred and Dispreferred Speech Acts: L2 Spanish Learners’ Intonation and Fluency in Acceptances and Refusals

Abstract

Abstract This exploratory study examined L2 Spanish learners’ tone choices and oral fluency when producing preferred and dispreferred speech acts, specifically acceptances and refusals. Participants were 27 college students enrolled in intermediate-level Spanish classes. They completed a video-based speaking task that elicited four acceptances and four refusals in response to imaginary scenarios (two status-equal and two status-unequal scenarios for refusals and acceptances, respectively). After reading a scenario, they watched a short video depicting the scenario and then produced an acceptance or refusal directed to the person in the video. All responses were recorded and analyzed using the Spanish Tones and Break Indices framework (Sp_ToBI; Estebas-Vilaplana and Prieto, 2009). Participants’ tone choices (rising or falling) and speech rate (average number of words spoken per minute) were analyzed and compared between acceptances and refusals. There was a tendency of the participants using more rising tone and less falling tone in refusals in comparison to their acceptances. Similarly, there was a tendency of them speaking more slowly in refusals than acceptances. However, these tendencies were not statistically significant, indicating that intermediate-level learners were not able to differentiate intonation and fluency between preferred and dispreferred speech acts.