Intonation and Emotion

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Intonation and Emotion

• Verena Theusner, Felix Wucherpfennig und Sascha
  Griffiths

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Hypothesis

• The intonation of a speaker is extremely
  influenced by her or his emotions
• Intonation varies with regard to duration,
  intensity and frequency of an utterance depending
  on emotions such as stress or fear

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Method/Data

• We cut out one sentence repeated several times
  within a dialogue scene of a movie (Jerry Maguire
  1996)
• The speaker is extraordinarily under pressure
• We compared different versions of the same
  utterance with special regard to the acoustic
  properties

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Our Example

• Show me the money

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Show me the Money
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The Context of the Cut-outs

• The dialogue, which contains the sentence we
  worked with, is a telephone call between the
  protagonists Jerry (Tom Cruise) and Rod (Cuba
  Gooding jr.)

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• Jerry had been a sports manager taking care of
  the worlds greatest athletes alive
• He has lost all but one client during the course
  of this telephone call with Rod, an American
  Football Player
• He is disappointed of having lost his clients
• Additionally he has to fear loosing Rod, too, and
  therefore is becoming more and more nervous

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But are these words always the same?

• Why not?
• What changes?
• Why does this change?
• What does a change imply?

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Data

• Duration
• Intensity
• Frequency

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Jerry3
11
Jerry7
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(No Transcript)
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Jerry4
14
Jerry9
15
(No Transcript)
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Jerry5
17
Jerry9
18
(No Transcript)
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Conclusion

• Examining the data carefully demonstrates that
  the increase of the speakers stress goes
  together with the increase of the duration and
  the rise of the intensity and frequency of his
  utterances.
• From this we can draw the conclusion that the
  speakers intonation is deeply influenced by his
  or her emotions at the moment of speaking.

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For Discussion

• The results, especially those concerning the
  frequency, are not ideal and must be treated
  carefully, because in all cut-outs there is
  constant background noise
• We only examined the relationship between stress
  and intonation. What about other emotions?
• Are we dealing with a genuine situation or is it
  acting?

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Thats all folks

• How to Handle Speech WS 02-03