Casual Speech Research Articles

Cross-Dialectal Vocabulary Differences in English: Implications for International Communication and Misunderstanding”

The following piece of research tends to explore the vocabulary differences between British and American English and their implications for international communication. Despite speaking the same language, the two dialects have developed different meanings for some terms, which could cause miscommunication when people from different cultures interact. In this study, the author concentrates on the example vocabularies of “Rubber,” “Pants,” and “Chips” and explains the distinctions between them in British and American English, as well as how these distinctions can lead to misunderstandings in casual speech. By examining the historical and cultural contexts behind these vocabulary variations, the research aims to provide insights into the relevant challenges and misunderstandings that may be caused in international communications. The author intents to contribute to a deeper understanding of how language differences can impact cross-cultural interactions through this research.

The Analysis of The Speech Style Used By Steve Harvey's Talk Show in The Episode “Inspiring Young Man Brings Steve Harvey To Tears”

The purpose of this research is to analyze the speech style used by Steve Harvey in the episode "Inspiring Young Man Brings Steve Harvey to Tears". On Steve Harvey’s official YouTube page called The Steve TV Show, the episode recorded 575,739 views and episodes uploaded on March 24, 2024. The Steve Harvey Show is a television show. This research aims to identify and categorize the various speech styles used by Steve Harvey (Host) and Walter Carr (guest) in the episode, as well as to understand the context and function of each style. The method used in this research is qualitative descriptive analysis for data collection. Data collected from analyzed video and transcripts of talk show episodes were analyzed and then classified based on the theory of Joos Martin (1962), which divides speech style into five levels, namely: frozen style, formal style, consultative style, informal style, and intimate style. Based on Joos Martin’s theory, Steve Harvey and Walter Carr preferred Consultative Speech Style at 84,62%, Casual Speech Style at 7,69%, Formal Speech Style at 15,38%, Intimate Speech Style at 0%, Frozen Speech Style at 0% emerging during intense emotional moments at and the guest. These findings explain how speech style preferences influence interaction and emotional resonance in talk-show situations.

INDONESIAN DISCOURSE PARTICLES FOUND IN THE TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH YES/NO QUESTIONS IN THE RPG HONKAI: STAR RAIL

In typical Indonesian dialogues or casual speech (cakap), particles are commonly used. The dynamics of the Role-Playing Game (RPG) Honkai: Star Rail are closely tied to character interactions, particularly through dialogues that include yes-no questions. This study aims to identify Indonesian discourse particles in the translation of English yes/no questions in the RPG Honkai: Star Rail. The researcher finds that there are thirteen (13) units or 69% of Indonesian discourse particles found in the translation of English yes/no questions. The discourse particles ya are the most frequent. This particle is 9 units, meanwhile, kan and dong are 3 units or 23% and 1 unit or 8% respectively. Since RPGs are a medium for delivering a variety of languages, it would be beneficial for other researchers to explore language use in RPGs further.

Classification patterns in conversational English fricatives: Between- and within- speaker analyses

This study examines between- and within- speaker patterns in random forest classification models for fricatives in conversational English. Prior investigations on the categorization of fricatives have mostly focused on group-level analyses and careful speech. We use a corpus of sociolinguistic interview speech from Western Canadian English, which represents a more casual speech style, and we compare group-level results to the findings of classification models on individual speakers’ productions. The models use 23 different spectral, temporal, and amplitudinal measures to predict phonetic labels of the fricatives. Our results reveal that certain top-ranked predictors at the group level (e.g., spectral peak frequency, segment duration) are also important for fricative classification in the individual models. Other measures (e.g., midpoint kurtosis, RMS) show substantial variability in their relative prominence and play greater roles in individual- versus group-level modeling. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of individual variation in connected speech and what the findings may imply about models of production and perception.

Acoustic Correlates of Subtypes of Irony in Chilean Spanish

Utterances containing verbal irony display prosodic particularities that distinguish them from non-ironic speech. While some prosodic features of irony have been identified in Spanish, previous studies have not accounted for different subtypes, nor have they examined this phenomenon in Chilean Spanish despite the unique intonation patterns in this dialect. This study examined the acoustic and prosodic correlates of five subtypes of irony (jocularity, rhetorical questions, understatements, hyperbole, and sarcasm) spontaneously occurring in the casual speech of sociolinguistic interviews with fifteen Chilean women. We segmented 3907 syllable nuclei from 197 spontaneously occurring instances of irony and compared the syllables within the ironic utterances to those in the pre-ironic utterances, along seven acoustic and prosodic variables: pitch range, duration, F0, F1, F2, H1*–H2*, and HNR. The results showed that the speakers favored jocularity and did not produce sarcasm or understatements, and that jocularity, hyperbole, and rhetorical questions significantly differed from the baseline utterances along a variety of acoustic and prosodic measures. We argue that these cues contributed to marking the ironic utterances as salient, allowing these women to talk about difficult real-life events with a touch of humor. Our study provides additional evidence for the connection between prosody and pragmatics in Chilean Spanish and lays the groundwork for further examination of irony and prosody in this and other Spanish dialects.

Acoustic adjustments of clear speech in Korean heritage vowel production

Aims and objectives: This study aims to explore the segmental and suprasegmental acoustic adjustments in the clear speech of Korean vowels produced by English-dominant Korean-heritage speakers and native Korean speakers. Methodology: Native Korean students at a university in the United States and Korean-American students enrolled in an intermediate Korean language course at the same university read isolated sentences featuring three representative Korean vowels (i.e., /i, a, u/), once in casual speech, and once in clear speech. They repeated this sequence five times. Data and analysis: The vowel space of the first and second formants (F1 and F2) in the clear speech was expanded for both heritage and native speakers, and the heritage vowel space was more fronted than the native vowel space, suggesting the influence of English among heritage speakers. However, the peripheral extent and direction in the clear speech and the dominant language effect in heritage speakers were inconsistent across the vowels. Also, pitch dynamics were highly significant in clear speech, exhibiting the salient fundamental frequency (F0) rising at the syllable offset for both heritage and native speakers. The vowel length enhancement in the clear speech was also confirmed in both native and heritage Korean vowels. Conclusions: The results confirmed the cross-language tendency in clear speech to induce the modification of vowel quality, pitch, and duration, which also applies to Korean heritage vowel production. Furthermore, the asymmetrical acoustic modifications across the vowels in heritage clear speech support the Speech Learning Model (SLM) prediction. Originality and implications: The findings present new data for the clear speech effects of Korean heritage vowel production and a further enhancement strategy of syllable offset pitch raising in clear speech for both native and heritage groups. The results contribute to the theoretical implication of bilingualism by connecting the SLM premise and heritage clear speech.

When speaking clearly does not enhance comprehension: Comparing intelligibility of hard-of-hearing- and non-native-directed speech for native and non-native listeners

While clear speech is more intelligible than casual speech, some prior work indicates that the clear speech benefit is reduced for non-native listeners. It is unclear, however, how intelligibility for native and non-native listeners might differ across clear styles directed towards different imagined interlocutor types. If clear speech enhancements benefit the intended listeners, then (1) for non-native listeners, non-native-directed speech should be more intelligible than hard-of-hearing-directed speech; (2) native and non-native listeners should benefit equally from non-native-directed speech, while the advantage of hard-of-hearing-directed speech should be greater for native listeners. Native English speakers were recorded producing casual, hard-of-hearing, and non-native-directed speech to imagined interlocutors. Results from a speech-perception-in-noise task indicate that (1) native listeners had higher transcription accuracy than non-native listeners; (2) hard-of-hearing-directed speech was more intelligible than both non-native-directed and casual speech; (3) non-native-directed and casual speech did not differ in intelligibility; and (4) native and non-native listeners did not differ in the relative benefit of hard-of-hearing-directed speech. Contra our hypothesis, non-native-directed speech did not benefit non-native listeners despite being hyper-articulated compared to casual speech. This study highlights that speakers’ expectations of what will be helpful for listeners do not always provide the intended benefit.

Modeling reduced speech using a simulated vocal tract and overlapping acoustic events

Reduced utterances are characterized by the alteration or deletion of segments (i.e., syllables, words) and often occur in spontaneous or casual speech styles. These reductions are common in everyday communication and are generally understood given sufficient context. However, modeling reduced speech is not trivial, as the effects of context, articulatory limitations, idiosyncrasies, and speech rate need to be considered in order to approximate acoustic observations of reduction. We utilize a speech production model which modulates a simulated vocal tract according to acoustic events organized along a time axis. The present study focuses on validating its capacity for modeling reduced speech. Evidence of its effectiveness is provided by way of synthetic example utterances, each accompanied by a description of the steps taken to synthesize the utterance and acoustic comparison to an unreduced equivalent. Word-medial consonant reductions will be studied first before proceeding to massive reductions where entire syllables and words are affected. We iteratively synthesize reduced utterances until they are evaluated through informal listening to be comparable to real acoustic observations. The results of this study are discussed as validation of the idea that acoustic events can be arranged to model reductions.

Acoustic properties of non-native clear speech: Korean speakers of English

The present study examined the acoustic properties of clear speech produced by non-native speakers of English (L1 Korean), in comparison to native clear speech. L1 Korean speakers of English (N=30) and native speakers of English (N=20) read an English word-list in casual and clear speaking styles. Analysis included clear speech correlates thought to be universal across languages (vowel space expansion and stressed vowel lengthening) and clear speech modifications believed to function in a languages-specific way (increased mean voice fundamental frequency and fo range and acoustic enhancement of English voicing contrast via voice onset time and onset fo). The results showed that across the two groups of participants clear speech was acoustically distinct from casual speech in every parameter. In addition, the presence and direction of the acoustic difference between the two speaking styles was largely the same for both native and non-native speakers. Nevertheless, non-native clear speech differed from native one in the magnitude of acoustic modifications. Specifically, L2 speakers implemented less vowel space expansion, less increase of mean fo, and less positive and negative VOT lengthening in clear speech than native speakers. Many, but not all differences between native and non-native clear speech could be attributed to the effect of participants’ L1, for example, lower functional load of VOT in the differentiation of Korean laryngeal categories and absence of pitch-dependent system of prosodic prominence in Korean. Overall, we conclude that Korean speakers were successful in producing native-like English clear speech, although the observed deviations in the extent of acoustic modifications suggest some reliance on L1-specific prosodic system and system of phonetic implementation and enhancement of phonological contrasts.

Declarative intonation of Japanese-Spanish bilinguals in Spanish casual speech

This study presents an analysis of Spanish intonation produced by native speakers of Japanese. The analysis focuses on the nuclear configurations of 828 declarative tokens in the semi-spontaneous Spanish speech of 12 Japanese-Spanish bilingual speakers living in Valencia, Spain. Results of the analysis show that the speakers can produce the prosodic differences between two declarative utterance types that are differentiated in peninsular Spanish by pitch peak timing and final boundary contours. Specifically, the speakers of this study favored rising final boundary tones when maintaining their turn and the falling final contours for the end of turn. Results show interlanguage with greater variation in final contours and pitch peak placement than predicted. The study contributes to acoustic research on learner intonation by late bilinguals, particularly in a language contact situation involving an Asian language and romance language pair.

Penultimate lengthening in isiNdebele: A system and its variations

Lengthening of the penultimate syllable in a word, phrase, or utterance is common across Bantu languages, especially in Eastern and Southern Bantu languages. Despite the prevalence of the general phenomenon, there is significant cross-linguistic diversity in how PUL is instantiated. The aim of this paper is to describe the PUL patterns and variation in isiNdebele, a Nguni language spoken in South Africa. IsiNdebele is closely related to Zulu and frequently spoken in situations of intense contact with Zulu, but its realisation of penultimate lengthening nevertheless shows important differences from what has been reported for Zulu and other Nguni languages. In addition, penultimate lengthening in isiNdebele shows significant internal variation, both across speakers and across utterances produced by the same speaker. This variation has implications for both phonological and syntactic analyses of this language: Many studies of phonological phrasing in other Nguni languages use penultimate length as the main phonetic cue for phrase boundaries, but a strict correlation between PUL and phrasing cannot be confirmed for isiNdebele. Lengthening also depends on factors such as speech rate, emphasis, and careful vs. casual speech.

Comparing intelligibility and recognition memory of human and text-to-speech voices

Clear speech can be more intelligible and better remembered than casual speech. Intelligibility and memory are assumed to be related—under the effortfulness hypothesis, the intelligibility-enhancing properties of clear speech (e.g., slower speech rate) facilitate processing, which frees up working memory resources and confers a memory advantage. However, prior work has only investigated naturally produced clear speech. How does clear speech influence memory for computer voices? The current study examines intelligibility and recognition memory of clear and casual speech for a text-to-speech (TTS) voice and a human voice, and compares older and younger adult listeners. In a speech-perception-in-noise task, clear speech was more intelligible than casual speech for both voices, the human was more intelligible than the TTS voice, and the younger adults performed better than the older adults. In an old-new recognition task, memory was better for the human voice relative to the TTS voice, consistent with the intelligibility results and the effortfulness hypothesis. However, inconsistent with the effortfulness hypothesis, there was no clear speech memory benefit, and the older adults performed better than the younger adults. The current findings are relevant for our understanding of human-computer interaction and theories about the relationship between speaking style and memory.

Effects of auditory context on nonnative recognition of reduced speech: Does meaning explain it all?

Previous studies have shown that acoustic cues in the sentential context improve native (L1) listeners’ recognition of reduced speech (Janse & Ernestus, 2011). That is, when hearing a reduced target in casual speech (e.g., too into /twntə/), L1 listeners would be more accurate in recognizing it in its surrounding speech (e.g., she’s too into computers) than if they merely see the text of its context (e.g., she’s ____ computers), even though semantic/syntactic information is equivalent in both conditions. It is unclear, however, whether nonnative (L2) listeners make use of the acoustic cues in the context to facilitate reduced speech recognition to the same extent as L1 listeners do. This study investigates this question by comparing L1 and L2 listeners of English in their recognition of reduced words that were aurally presented in three conditions—Isolation, Textual (with surrounding text given), and Auditory (with both text and auditory forms of context)—in a repetition task. Results showed that L2 listeners were significantly more accurate in the Auditory than Textual condition, and such difference was not distinguishable from L1 listeners. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that the facilitative effects of context acoustic cues are language general.

Constraints on Ease of Articulation in the Phonetics of Israeli Hebrew Casual Speech

Abstract: In the casual speech register, speakers naturally tend to facilitate ease of articulation, usually through processes of assimilation, reduction and elision, occasionally by insertion of certain vowels or consonantal glides. Such processes of assimilation, reduction or elision usually affect elements perceived to be weak, or minimal, and whose presence is not truly required (phonetically, or semantically), or that are easily recoverable from the context. There are, however, constraints on ease of articulation processes, preventing them from violating certain phonetic restrictions. There are also independent considerations that prevent reduction, elision or assimilation if they may affect significant semantic distinctions that are too essential to ignore. Thus, for instance, there exists a preference for secondary stress assignment resulting in alternating rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables in connected Hebrew speech; the configuration realigns itself in cases of vowel deletion, or when a "minimal" vowel is inserted to prevent sonority-hierarchy violations, or when a "stress clash" arises, and one of the syllables may need to be destressed to accommodate the alternating stress rhythm. However, another constraint assures that no destressing of the main stress of regular lexical items occur if the word concerned cannot easily be reconstructed from the context. Furthermore, no shifting is allowed in the placement of the main lexical stress, unless it is a function word or a very frequent, easily identified lexical item. A few phonetic constraints will be discussed in some detail, as well as semantic ones reassuring that the processing of meaning will not be negatively affected by phonetic "ease-of-articulation" processes.

Non-native talkers and listeners and the perceptual benefits of clear speech.

This study examined the intelligibility benefit of native and non-native clear speech for native and non-native listeners when the first language background of non-native talkers and listeners is matched. All four combinations of talkers and listeners were tested: native talker-native listener, non-native talker-native listener, native talker-non-native listener, and non-native talker-non-native listener. Listeners were presented with structurally simple but semantically anomalous English sentences produced clearly or casually and mixed with speech-shaped noise at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio and asked to write down what they heard. Results showed that native English speech was more intelligible than non-native speech and that native English listeners recovered speech better than non-native listeners did. Clear speech was significantly more intelligible than casual speech. There were no interactions between speaking style and native language background indicating that clear speech intelligibility benefit was not significantly different across distinct combinations of talkers and listeners. In particular, shared first language background among non-native speakers and listeners did not provide an extra benefit in either the overall speech intelligibility or the intelligibility gains of clear speech.

Mandarin lexical tone duration: Impact of speech style, word length, syllable position and prosodic position

This study aims to increase our knowledge of Mandarin lexical tone duration in continuous Mandarin speech. Related variation factors such as the number of syllable(s) in word, the position of syllable in word, its prosodic position and speech style were also explored. Large corpora of casual and journalistic speech (total ∼1000 hours) were used. More than 90% of the words (tokens) used in spoken Mandarin are monosyllabic and disyllabic words. In casual speech, 67% of the wordtokens are monosyllabic and 30% of the word-tokens are disyllabic. In journalistic speech, however, disyllabic words (49%) are more frequently used than monosyllabic words (45%). Tone 4 is the most frequently used tone among the four lexical tones in both casual (34%) and journalistic (36%) speech. Tone 1, Tone 2 and Tone 3 have similar occurrence frequencies in causal speech. Tone 3 appears to be the least frequently used tone in journalistic speech. With regard to tone duration, the results show that Tone 2 tends to have the shortest duration in causal speech and Tone 3 appears to have the longest duration in journalistic speech. Nonetheless, the studied variation factors (number of syllable(s) in word, position of syllable in word and prosodic position) are all found to influence the duration of Mandarin lexical tones, for both causal speech and journalistic speech. Tone durations in monosyllabic words appear to be closer to those of word-final syllables than to other syllable positions in multi-syllabic words. In terms of prosodic position, tone duration tends to increase with higher prosodic level in both casual and journalistic speech. Regardless of tone nature and speech style, the longest tone duration is in phrase-final position, followed by word-final and then word-medial position. Regional variety for tone duration is explored using casual speech productions from speakers of five major cities of North and South-East China, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Wuxi, Suzhou and Nanjing.

Speech style used in Jimmy Kimmel Live talk show

This research aimed to analyze the use of speech style and the factors that influenced the use of speech style in the Jimmy Kimmel Live Talk Show in all episodes that were aired in November 2021. Speech style is the choice of words based on the level of formality used by a person in communicating, which is influenced by several factors. In this research, the researcher applied Joos' (1976) theory of speech style and Holmes' (2013) theory of factors that influenced the choice of speech style. This research was classified as qualitative descriptive. All of the data in this research were taken from the conversation subtitles between the host and the guest/s, which contained various types of speech styles and were transcribed into the text form. Then, the collected data were classified based on the types of speech styles. After that, the factors that influenced the host and the guest/s to use the speech style were analysed. Based on the results of the research, there are four of the five types of speech styles in this research. Frozen speech style was not found in this research. The four speech styles found in this research were formal (6%), consultative (12%), casual (81%), and intimate (1%), the dominant type of speech style is casual speech style and the least one is intimate speech style.

Native Listeners' Use of Information in Parsing Ambiguous Casual Speech.

In conversational speech, phones and entire syllables are often missing. This can make “he’s” and “he was” homophonous, realized for example as [ɨz]. Similarly, “you’re” and “you were” can both be realized as [jɚ], [ɨ], etc. We investigated what types of information native listeners use to perceive such verb tenses. Possible types included acoustic cues in the phrase (e.g., in “he was”), the rate of the surrounding speech, and syntactic and semantic information in the utterance, such as the presence of time adverbs such as “yesterday” or other tensed verbs. We extracted utterances such as “So they’re gonna have like a random roommate” and “And he was like, ‘What’s wrong?!’” from recordings of spontaneous conversations. We presented parts of these utterances to listeners, in either a written or auditory modality, to determine which types of information facilitated listeners’ comprehension. Listeners rely primarily on acoustic cues in or near the target words rather than meaning and syntactic information in the context. While that information also improves comprehension in some conditions, the acoustic cues in the target itself are strong enough to reverse the percept that listeners gain from all other information together. Acoustic cues override other information in comprehending reduced productions in conversational speech.

An analysis of speech styles used by two characters in the movie Green Book

This study analyzes the different speech styles used by two characters in the movie Green Book. The characters are Tony Lip, a white driver, and Dr. Shirley, a black musician. The objectives of this study are to find out the types of speech styles used by the two characters and to find out the differences in the speech styles used. The source of data in this study is the movie script. Descriptive-qualitative method is selected to analyze the data. Joos’ theory (1967) was applied in this research, which concerns the five types of speech styles including frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate styles. The result of this research shows that Tony Lip only used four types of speech styles: formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. Tony Lip dominantly used casual speech style, whereas formal style is the least frequent. Dr. Shirley used all five types of speech styles. Consultative speech style is the most commonly used by Dr. Shirley, whereas frozen speech style is the least frequent

Non-native talkers and listeners and perceptual benefits of clear speech

Native clear speech aids speech perception for various native populations such as hearing-impaired adults (Picheny et al., 1985). Compared to native speech, little is known about the benefit of non-native clear speech (Smijlanic and Bradlow, 2011). The current study investigates whether non-native clear speech can aid both native and non-native listeners, using every combination of talkers and listeners (native talker/listener, and non-native talker/listener). Non-native participants were L1 Korean speakers, while native participants were L1 American English speakers. Each group had 32 participants listening to semantically anomalous English sentences recorded by four native and four non-native talkers and presented with speech-shaped noise at 0 dB SNR in each speaking style (casual and clear). Each sentence had four keywords, and the number of correct keywords was converted to rationalized arcsine units. The results show significant effects of talker L1, listener L1, and speaking style. Native speech was more intelligible than non-native one and native listeners outperformed non-native listeners. Clear speech was more intelligible than casual speech. However, none of the interactions among the factors reached statistical significance, indicating the two groups of talkers and the two groups of listeners behaved in a parallel way in terms of producing and receiving clear speech benefits.