Paralinguistic

Features
Theoretical Material

Harmer, J (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching.

Pearson Education Limited.

Brown, G. (1990). Listening to Spoken English. Longman.

Paralinguistic Features

☛ “Features of communication that take place outside the formal systems of

language” (Harmer, 2007)
☛ Two broad categories:
1. Voice
2. Body (facial expression; gesture; proximity, posture and echoing)

Whether produced willingly or not, PFs convey intentions, feelings and

attitudes.
Paralinguistic Features of Speech

☛ “Phonetic features of speech which do not form an intrinsic part of the

phonological contrast which make up the verbal message” (Brown, 1990)
☛ They are features which we listen to.
☛ They add meaning over and above the verbal component of the message.
Conceptual meaning: meaning conveyed by the verbal content.
Affective meaning: meaning conveyed by PFs.
Characteristics
☛ They are vocal features.
☛ They can reinforce or contradict the verbal message (irony).
☛ They are relative features → PFs “represent a departure from the normal habit
of the individual, not from some abstract, absolut norm” (Brown, 1990)
☛ They are culture-bound.
☛ They usually co-occur.
☛ They are marked features (a deviation from the norm).
Brown’s (1990) Taxonomy
Placing in Voice Range
☛ This feature is defined as the placing of the diverse pitch spans in
various parts of the total voice range.
➢Squeak range (voice range above the normal speaking range)
The Gingerbread Man → The old woman “heard a tiny voice calling,
'Let me out! Let me out!'”.

Normal speaking range (unmarked)

➢Growl range (voice range below the normal speaking range)

The Trolls → “The Trolls were discovered by… a Bergen!”
Vincent Malloy → “He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cats /
though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats”
Pitch Span
☛ This feature can be defined as the amount of movement in the pitch of the voice.

➢ Extended pitch span

The Story of Tilly → “I don’t want to go to bed”

Medium/ Normal pitch span (unmarked)

➢ Restricted pitch span

Trolls → “Oh, my god!”
Tempo /ˈtempəʊ/
☛ This feature is connected to the speed of delivery of a message.

➢ Rapid / fast tempo

Kung Fu Panda → Po: “upset? I’m not upset… why why why would I be upset?”

Normal tempo (unmarked)

➢ Slow tempo
Beauty and the Beast → “Once upon a time, in a far-away land, a young prince
lived in a shining castle”
Loudness
☛ Variation of loudness or softness of an utterance.

➢ Loud voice / loudness

Vincent Malloy → “Every horror in his life had had crept through his
dreams / Swept his mad laughter to terrible screams!”

Normal voice (unmarked)

➢ Soft voice / softness

The Story of Tilly → “Tilly, it’s time to go to bed”
Voice Setting
☛ This feature can be defined as adjustments in the vocal cords which bring about various
effects of voicing.

➢ Creaky voice
The Gingerbread Man → “One day, the little old woman decided to make a
special treat 'I will make a gingerbread man,' she said”

Normal vocal cord setting (unmarked)

➢ Breathy voice (no vibration of the vocal cords) /ˈbreθi/

The Holiday → “For some, quite inexplicably, love fades. For others, love is simply lost”
Articulatory Setting

☛ This feature is related to the amount of “tenseness” of the articulatory tract.

➢ Tense articulatory setting (commonly marked by the hardening of

musculature in the pharyngeal cavity)
Finding Nemo → “Coral, don’t. They’ll be fine. Just get inside. You.
Right now!”

Normal articulatory setting (unmarked)

Articulatory Precision

☛ This feature can be defined as the amount of precision of articulation.

➢ Precise articulation (the precision differs from the usual articulatory habits of the
speaker; e.g producing phonological adjustments)

The Story of Tilly → “eight dark stairs”

Normal (unmarked)

➢ Slurred articulation (the speech of someone who is drowsy or under the influence of
alcohol)
Slurred Articulation
Slurred Articulation
Timing of Segments

☛ It’s “possible for a speaker to extend a segment or syllable, to lengthen it, for stylistic
purposes, to lay special weight on a given word” (Brown, 1990).

➢ Extended timing of segments/syllables (another synonymously related term:

drawling)

Beauty and the Beast → Once upon a time, in a far-away land”

Normal timing of segments (unmarked)

Lip Setting

☛ The posture of the lips affects the sound of the spoken message.

➢ Smiling lip setting

The Trolls → Once upon a time… In a happy forest, in the happiest tree, lived the
happiest creatures the world has ever known. The Trolls”

Normal Lip Setting (unmarked)

➢ Pursed lip setting (pouting out the lips) → e.g, when addressing babies or pet animals
The Story of Tilly → “But I don’t want to go to bed”
Pause
☛ Pauses are connected to the rhythmic structure of speech.

➢ Rhetorical pauses (mainly to emphasize and make especially important the part of
the utterance following the pause)

The Trolls → The Bergens would gather around the troll tree / to taste happiness
/ on a holiday / they called / Trollstice”

Normal pause placing (unmarked) → physiological pauses

Extra Comments

☛ We have considered only some of the features that can be noticed just by
listening to the speaker, without necessarily observing him/her.

☛ PFs help us identify some of the characteristics of a particular speaker:

● Male/ female
● Child / adult
● Speaking with a hurry / with plenty of time
● Speaking aggressively / kindly
It is possible to utilize PFs to guide students through “taped spoken
language long before they can be expected to understand all the
vocabulary or the syntactic structures being used - just by becoming
sensitized to these features which are often already quite familiar , but
not at a conscious level, they can learn to put them to use in
interpretation”. (Brown, 1990)