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The Secret of Voice: Why Does Emotional Expression Affect Our Communication?
In communication, there is an often overlooked but crucial element - tone of voice. Intonation is not just a change in voice, it also carries emotional color and can profoundly affect our communication effectiveness. From the perspective of linguistics, this expression belongs to the suprasegmental characteristics, which include pitch, stress, rhythm and other aspects.
According to research, the various properties of speech can be divided into subjective (listener's auditory impression) and objective (physical properties of sound waves). Among them, factors such as pitch, duration of sound, volume, and timbre all affect our language presentation to varying degrees. These changes each carry information, helping the listener understand the importance of the sentence and the change in context.
"Intonation not only expresses the speaker's emotional state, but also affects the understanding of semantics."
In a conversation, the pitch and changes in tone often determine the nature of the words. For example, in English conversation, the rise and fall of speech can turn a simple declarative sentence into a question, such as the change between "Is this a cat?" and "This is a cat." These subtle changes are crucial to the accuracy with which the listener understands the speech.
Stress is another important speech feature, which helps listeners grasp the key points by changing the emphasis on a syllable in a sentence. When we emphasize a word in a sentence, the listener can recognize the information more clearly. For example, "I never said she stole my money." The meaning of the sentence changes depending on the emphasis position ("I" or "said").
“The speech characteristics of emotion are mostly caused by the changes in the speaker’s voice tone.”
This is closely related to prosody, the use of which can affect the overall fluency and intelligibility of speech. More specifically, pauses and rhythm changes in speech not only help extract information, but also guide the listener's emotional response. Research shows that the correct rhythm of speech can enhance a speaker’s credibility and appeal.
Voice provides us with important clues in the expression of emotions. When a person is anxious or agitated, the quality, pitch, and rate of their voice will change. In some cases, these changes can even go beyond the literal meaning of the language and directly convey the depth of emotion.
“The recognition of emotional speech involves a subconscious decoding process, which is crucial to the effectiveness of communication.”
In the process of language acquisition, the characteristics of emotional speech are particularly important for young children. Adults often use higher-pitched and varied voices (called baby talk) to communicate with children, which helps children recognize the phonemes in speech and the rhythm of language.
However, when emotional speech cannot be expressed normally, it may result in what is known as "atonalism". This refers to the situation where, during communication, the speaker is unable to correctly change the pitch, strength and rhythm of the voice, thus affecting the emotional transmission of the language. This is very common in some people with autism.
In our communication, whether face-to-face or via phone, video, etc., the emotional expression of voice always subtly affects our understanding and response. This is important to understand, as understanding how emotional speech works can help us communicate better in our daily lives and increase our understanding of each other.
In summary, voice is not only a part of language, it is also a bond of emotion. Studies like this provide us with a deeper understanding of how tone of voice shapes the way we interact. Have you ever wondered why, in certain moments, the depth of emotion can be fully conveyed through speech even without words?
