Spoken Modality Research Articles

Emergent Life: Opening Our Lives to Differenciation and to Response-Ability, as We Turn Our Critical Gaze on the Enunciative Regularities That Hold the World the Same

In this article, I explore a range of concepts that enable those of us who work with children to break free from some of those enunciative regularities that function to hold the way things are, in place. The term “enunciative regularities” comes from Foucault, who advocated breaking open words and propositions to find what work they do, what systems they perpetuate. The way we speak the world into existence, and the ways we interpret that mode of speaking, can be taken for granted, by us, as the unquestionable truth of the world and of ourselves. We are, in general, not very accomplished at turning our reflexive gaze on the words and propositions that we are enmeshed in, and thus are not readily able to break them open. Turning our critical gaze on those enunciative regularities is vital, I suggest, if we want to bring about change in the way we order the world—and the ways the world orders us. The work of philosophy, in developing new concepts, enables us to look and to listen differently, and to creatively evolve beyond some of our unquestioned enunciative entrapments.

Who is singing? Voice recognition from spoken versus sung speech.

Singing is socially important but constrains voice acoustics, potentially masking certain aspects of vocal identity. Little is known about how well listeners extract talker details from sung speech or identify talkers across the sung and spoken modalities. Here, listeners (n = 149) were trained to recognize sung or spoken voices and then tested on their identification of these voices in both modalities. Learning vocal identities was initially easier through speech than song. At test, cross-modality voice recognition was above chance, but weaker than within-modality recognition. We conclude that talker information is accessible in sung speech, despite acoustic constraints in song.

From grassroots literacy to transliteracies in the educational context of the Moldavian Csángó

ABSTRACT This paper investigates literacies in the Moldavian region of Romania, where bilingual speakers produce writings in a contested language they call the ‘Csángó mode of speaking’. The speakers sometimes define their language as collateral both with Standard Hungarian and Romanian. Our research question is the following: How are locally constructed collateral literacy practices transformed or neglected in standardising educational contexts? The theoretical question we raise in this article is whether Blommaert’s concept of grassroots literacy or the newer transliteracies framework is better suited to describe the process of a collateral language becoming literate. The collateral language, the Csángó mode of speaking, is no longer passed onto children by the parents, who still might use it among themselves, thus the children still might acquire a passive knowledge of it. Since 2001, a relatively popular educational programme teaching Standard Hungarian literacy has evolved. As our data, we use texts produced by c. 100 participants of the Moldavian Csángó Hungarian Educational Programme from eight villages. Our contribution is to investigate how transliteracies can constitute a resource not only for local ways of speaking, but also for the development of general literacy skills instead of skills bound to a single language.

Dimensions of Text Complexity in the Spoken and Written Modes: A Comparison of Theory-Based Models

In many studies, grammatical complexity has been treated as a single unified construct. However, other research contradicts that view, suggesting instead that the different structural types and syntactic functions of complexity features are distributed in texts in fundamentally different ways. These patterns have been documented in general corpora that include a wide range of spoken and written registers. One question that has not been fully addressed is whether grammatical complexity features are organized in the same ways in the spoken versus written modes. The present study tests the empirical adequacy of four competing models based on different theoretical conceptualizations of text complexity, comparing their goodness-of-fit in spoken versus written modes. The results show that text complexity must be treated as a multi-dimensional construct; dimensions that combine structural type and syntactic function provide the best account of the actual patterns of linguistic co-occurrence. To a large extent, the same complexity dimensions operate in both the spoken and written modes. Two of these dimensions—dependent phrases functioning as noun modifiers and finite dependent clauses functioning as clause-level constituents—represent the strongest co-occurrence patterns. In addition, these two dimensions operate in complementary distribution, in both the spoken and written modes. Overall, though, these two dimensions are shown to represent stronger co-occurrence patterns in the written mode than in the spoken mode.

Saying and Speaking. A Voice-Centered Theoretical Approach to Communication and Media in the Aristotelian Tradition

This article presents a theory of communication for media and a related model that aim at explaining how communication is a process comprising various areas of human existence, while its manifestation in the voice is a concrete performance with a pertaining power. In Aristotle we find a scholar who described with the logos a faculty present in the human mind and speech, but his writings allow to reconstruct a more comprehensive perspective on the voice with the distinction between the modes of speaking and saying. In order to show this communication process we employ the concepts of mediation, enmediation, and remediation and the modes of speaking and saying in the Aristotelian tradition, we develop our model of a voice-centered theory of communication for media that comprises the for the voice permeable intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal areas of communication.

The Pronunciation of the Capital of Ukraine in English-Speaking Media

Speaker identity is one of the factors that might play a role in the realisation of sounds. Previous studies have observed that phonetic variations, alongside the formation of speaker’s identity, can index political meaning. This article aims at analysing a politically conditioned variation in rendering the name of the capital of Ukraine. Though the change from ‘Kiev’ to ‘Kyiv’ precedes the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine, the analysis shows 24 February, 2022 has accelerated the process. Contrary to the general tendency for a language change to manifest first in the spoken mode and then proceed to writing, the findings indicate faster shift from ‘Kiev’ to ‘Kyiv’ in written English.

Code-switching as a bilingual and multilingual linguistic strategy in the construction of Amathaf’entandabuzo

Code-switching in spoken modes has now been studied fairly extensively and is better understood at the conversational as well as the scholarly level. In a multilingual and multicultural society such as South Africa, code-switching is not only a conventional communicative strategy, but also a blueprint that is used in modern isiXhosa literature in prose narrative and poetry. Given that, this article uses a selected isiXhosa drama to underline how and why code-switching is utilised as a linguistic phenomenon. The debates here are inspired by the deficit in the scholarly examination of isiXhosa literature hinging on isiXhosa linguistics. Note-taking, which is subsumed under qualitative research methodology, is employed to examine the isiXhosa drama as a source of data, while code-switching is used as a theoretical perspective. It must be stressed that this article does not try to unravel the drama in respect of theoretical literary underpinnings, but focuses on the discourses concerning code-switching as a linguistic occurrence in constructing and assembling isiXhosa literature. Finally, concluding remarks, as well as recommendations, are presented for future scholarly debates for the very reason that seeks to advance isiXhosa linguistics.

From potential words to actual words: A pronunciation-integrated teaching model to facilitate productive oral vocabulary development

Facilitating the transformation of vocabulary from receptive to productive can be challenging for second language (L2) teachers. Although some studies have focused on understanding activities that promote productive vocabulary in written modes (e.g., Teng & Xu, 2022), little is known about the effect of activities on productive vocabulary in spoken modes. To fill this gap, this paper presents an innovative pronunciation-integrated teaching model to facilitate productive oral vocabulary development. Pronunciation training and vocabulary teaching are typically seen as distinct areas of teaching English as a Second Language; yet, in the context of developing productive vocabulary to be used in speaking, they are highly complementary. Therefore, the innovativeness of the model presented here is the integration of pronunciation training into vocabulary-focused. The teaching model is helpful because it provides teachers with a practical guide for the creation of activities that can be used for classroom teaching of productive oral vocabulary.

From potential words to actual words: A pronunciation-integrated teaching model to facilitate productive oral vocabulary development

Facilitating the transformation of vocabulary from receptive to productive can be challenging for second language (L2) teachers. Although some studies have focused on understanding activities that promote productive vocabulary in written modes (e.g., Teng & Xu, 2022), little is known about the effect of activities on productive vocabulary in spoken modes. To fill this gap, this paper presents an innovative pronunciation-integrated teaching model to facilitate productive oral vocabulary development. Pronunciation training and vocabulary teaching are typically seen as distinct areas of teaching English as a Second Language; yet, in the context of developing productive vocabulary to be used in speaking, they are highly complementary. Therefore, the innovativeness of the model presented here is the integration of pronunciation training into vocabulary-focused. The teaching model is helpful because it provides teachers with a practical guide for the creation of activities that can be used for classroom teaching of productive oral vocabulary.

The next station: chunking of değİl ‘not’ collocations in Turkish Sign Language

Abstract More recently, grammaticalization theorists have become increasingly aware of the role of collocations in grammatical development. One of these roles is to define phonetic reductions and fusion in frequent collocations as constructionalization. Based on frequency of occurrences, the present study explores the implications of high-frequency collocations in Turkish Sign Language for grammaticalization and offers a novel account of constructional change of değİl ‘not’ on usage-based grounds. Specifically, the study suggests that (i) the chunking process is not language-specific within the spoken modality, as noted previously in the literature, (ii) the frequency of collocations is strongly correlated with phonetic reduction and duration, (iii) the fusional characteristics of [sign + değİl] collocations can be classified under four reduced constructional schemas, (iv) the monosyllabicity of a scheme appears to be criterion for it to be productive in signed modality and (v) the semantic changes of frequent [sign + değİl] collocations are related to the notion of subjectification in TİD.

Effect of evaluative expressions on two types of demonstrative pronouns in German

We propose a unified prominence-based account of the two paradigms of demonstrative pronouns in German: the die- and diese-paradigm. The two types of demonstrative pronouns have been shown to have similar referential preferences — avoiding the most prominent referent — but different language register and modality preferences — diese pronouns prefer formal language whereas die pronouns prefer informal language and the spoken modality. They also reveal different strengths in terms of referential shift and last-mentioned antecedent preference. We propose that the perspectival prominence-based account initially proposed by Hinterwimmer & Bosch (2016; 2017) for die pronouns can be extended to incorporate both demonstrative pronouns. Our extended proposal suggests that the perspectivally prominent discourse referent is the highest ranked element on the prominence scale only for die pronouns but not for diese pronouns, and that perspectival prominence can be modulated by evaluative expressions. For diese pronouns, on the other hand, the aboutness topic is the highest ranked discourse referent on the prominence scale and they are not influenced by evaluative expressions. We report two experiments to test our account. The experimental results largely support the predictions of the new unified account. 

Listening speaks to our intuition while reading promotes analytic thought.

It is widely assumed that thinking is independent of language modality because an argument is either logically valid or invalid regardless of whether we read or hear it. This is taken for granted in areas such as psychology, medicine, and the law. Contrary to this assumption, we demonstrate that thinking from spoken information leads to more intuitive performance compared with thinking from written information. Consequently, we propose that people think more intuitively in the spoken modality and more analytically in the written modality. This effect was robust in five experiments (N = 1,243), across a wide range of thinking tasks, from simple trivia questions to complex syllogisms, and it generalized across two different languages, English and Chinese. We show that this effect is consistent with neuroscientific findings and propose that modality dependence could result from how language modalities emerge in development and are used over time. This finding sheds new light on the way language influences thought and has important implications for research that relies on linguistic materials and for domains where thinking and reasoning are central such as law, medicine, and business. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Clear speech and phonological typology: A case study of Tashlhiyt Berber

Clear speech is a type of listener-oriented, intelligibility-enhancing mode of speaking. It has been shown to enhance the perceptibility of many different types of phonological contrasts, cross-linguistically. An open question is whether all phonological contrasts are enhanced to an equivalent extent in clear speech. In the current study, we ask whether rarer phonological patterns receive less of a clear speech intelligibility boost, relative to more common phoneme contrasts. Tashlhiyt Berber is an Afroasiatic language spoken in Morocco. Tashlhiyt has been well studied for having typologically uncommon phonotactic properties. This study examines the effect of clear speech on the discrimination of rarer lexical contrasts in Tashlhiyt Berber. We predict that the more typologically uncommon contrasts (e.g., word pairs containing complex and geminate initial onsets) will have a smaller increase in perceptibility from casual to clear speech than more common contrasts (e.g., singleton contrasts). Furthermore, native and naive listeners’ (here, American English speakers) discrimination of these contrasts across speech styles is also compared. Cross-language perception of clear speech provides a window to understanding the phonetic bases for cross-linguistic typological patterns.

Retracted: Teaching Mode of Augmented Reality College English Listening and Speaking Supported by Wearable Technology

Retracted: Teaching Mode of Augmented Reality College English Listening and Speaking Supported by Wearable Technology

Typological characteristics of interlanguage: Across L2 modalities and proficiency levels.

In recent years, quantitative methods have been increasingly used in interlanguage studies, but these studies have mostly focused on the micro level with an emphasis on certain syntactic structures, rather than the macro where interlanguage is perceived as a whole. There remains a paucity of quantitative studies on interlanguage from the typological perspective. With the majority of the studies focused on the written interlanguage, there is also a lack of sufficient research on its spoken modality. Based on a syntactically annotated corpus and using the quantitative linguistic metric of dependency direction, we have investigated the typological changes in the Chinese interlanguage in both written and spoken modalities. The findings are as follows: (1) the typological features of interlanguage vary across modalities at both macro and micro levels; (2) dependency direction is proved to be an inappropriate indicator to measure the general typological characteristics of interlanguage development due to its failure to reflect the changes in the spoken modality; (3) both macro and micro perspectives taken into consideration, typological errors in the interlanguage is more likely to occur in the spoken modality than in the written one, in which learners may be restricted by greater time pressure and cognitive load in utterance. These factors may affect the distribution of dependency direction in the oral modality, and may be the reason why it is not appropriate to use dependency direction as a measure of changes in mediated language typological features in the oral modality. It is expected that our study will bring insight into second language research with more objective and holistic evidence.

Are the communications of African flight attendants a form of slurred speech?

Onboard international flights, you may have witnessed the pre-takeoff information/in-flight safety speech by the cabin crew. It is not out of place that they tend to be European in their mode of speaking. However, when on a local flight, the Europeanness of speech still comes out loud. We want to understand why such Europeanised intonation should be and the audience it is meant to serve. Our research leads us to the conclusion that this insensitivity of local airline operators stems from the desire to enjoy some patronage even if their actions inferiorise the community who are the major patronisers of their services. We will also explain why the Europeanisation of speech could lead to safety hazards. This work is inspired by the personal experiences of the researchers and of a few others.

REGISTER CATEGORIES (FIELD, TENOR, MODE) OF THE TEXT

This study is concerned with the employment of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory in analyzing a speech text. The selected text was reconstructed into some clauses and sentences and subsequently was analyzed in terms of its field, tenor, and mode. The results of the analysis have shown that the register category of the field of the text is the action of America’s change. The tenor as the realization of the interpersonal meaning of the text was the establishment of an intimate relationship that enables the orator to gain support from the audience. Meanwhile, the mode of the texts is categorized as spoken mode because the texts make use of simple nominal groups. Further studies need to cope with other ways of examining field, tenor, and mode as proposed by SFL theory.

Interactions between bilingual language proficiency and exposure: comparing subjective and objective measures across modalities in bilingual young adults

ABSTRACT Due to the varying aspects of the bilingual experience and the use of numerous subjective and objective measures across studies, bilingual individuals are often described and grouped differently. We examined the relationship among two subjective and one objective English proficiency measures in spoken and written modalities in 64 bilingual young adults with different levels of English exposure. Participants with high and medium English exposure performed similarly and better than participants with low English exposure across proficiency measures. Participants with high English exposure showed the most consistency in their performance across measures and modalities. Their performance on subjective and objective measures in both spoken and written modalities were strongly correlated. In the medium-exposure group, subjective and objective measures in both modalities were moderately correlated, but only as measured by a self-rated questionnaire. In the low-exposure group, subjective and objective measures in both modalities were moderately correlated, but only as measured by subjective ‘Can-Do’ statements in the spoken modality. Based on our findings, most proficiency measures provide accurate outcomes for Englishspeakers with high exposure and for balanced bilingual individuals. In contrast, more research is needed with English language learners or individuals with low language exposure to determine the most efficient proficiency measure.

Syntaktisk komplexitet i inlärarsvenska: en jämförelse mellan finska universitets-studenters muntliga och skriftliga produktion på två olika färdighetsnivåer

This study examines how proficiency level affects syntactic complexity in written and spoken L2 Swedish. Spoken production can be more challenging for learners at lower proficiency levels due to the limited resources for processing the target language (Skehan 1998), whereas the possibility for more extensive planning during the writing process enables the production of syntactically complex structures in writing (Skehan & Foster 2012, Tavakoli 2014). Automaticity at higher proficiency levels reduces the cognitive load that the spoken production imposes on learners and facilitates the production of complex structures in speech (Leonard & Shea 2017). However, few studies have directly compared complexity in written and spoken L2 production, and earlier studies have resulted in contradictory results (Kuiken & Vedder 2012b:364–365). The data in this study consist of monologues and essays produced by 31 Finnish university students. Some subjects study Scandinavian languages as their major, while others take part in a Swedish course at the Centre for Language and Communication Studies. The analysis is based on surface-level complexity measures, such as the mean length of production units and the dependent clause ratio. The results show that proficiency plays an important role especially in spoken production and, therefore, also in the differences between written and spoken production. At the lower proficiency level, written production is significantly more complex when it comes to the mean length of T- and AS-units, the dependent clause ratio, and the ratio of dependent clauses with a sentence adverbial. Surprisingly, the mean clause length shows higher complexity in speech at the lower proficiency level. At the higher proficiency level, there are no statistically significant differences between the modalities. These results indicate that the cognitively more demanding task of producing L2 speech can lead to the use of simple structures at the lower proficiency level, resulting in a greater difference between written and spoken complexity. The learners at the higher proficiency level seem to be able to produce complex structures also in the spoken mode, and therefore, there are no significant differences between written and spoken complexity at this level.

Conscience musicale du français langue parlée : éléments pour son conditionnement didactique

Musical awareness of languages in general and that of the French language in particular in the field of teaching French as a foreign language remains weak today, not generalized and far inferior to linguistic and cultural awareness. By placing oneself within the framework of the didactology-didactics of the music of the French language-culture, it appears that modes of conditioning of this spontaneous, intuitive and reflected musical consciousness can logically take their place in accordance with the fundamental existence of the music of the French language produced in the spoken mode and of the need for the learner to master it.