What is paralinguistics or paralanguage?

Up to 90 percent of communication between people is nonverbal; that is, we communicate with each other with more than words. We also convey messages through voice inflection, facial expression, and body gestures.

Paralinguistics is the study of these vocal (and sometimes non-vocal) signals that go beyond the basic verbal message or discourse, also known as vocalism. Paralinguistics gives much importance to how something is said rather than what is said.

etymology and definition

The Greek prefix para- means “next to” or “similar to”, while the word “linguistic” comes from the Latin lingua , meaning “language” or “language”. Therefore, we could say that paralinguistics is what accompanies speech.

Paralanguage includes all aspects of speech beyond words: stress, pitch, volume, rate, modulation, and fluency. Some researchers also include certain non-vocal phenomena within paralanguage, such as facial expressions, eye movements, hand gestures, and the like. According to the British sociolinguist Peter Matthews, the limits of paralanguage “are (inevitably) imprecise.”

Years ago, paralinguistics was considered the “neglected stepchild” of speech research, but today linguists and other researchers have become more interested in the field.

Due to the increase in non-face-to-face communication thanks to email, social networks and text messages (among others), emoticons are considered a written substitute for paralanguage.

Paralanguage within the cultural context

Non-verbal signals are not universal and can vary depending on each culture, which leads to confusion in communication between people from different contexts.

In Saudi Arabia, speaking loudly conveys authority, while speaking quietly implies submission; meanwhile, Europeans may perceive loudness as cheekiness. Suomi or Finnish is spoken more slowly than other European languages, leading to the perception that Finns themselves are “slow” . Some people have a similar perception of the southern accent in the United States.

Although we speak with our vocal organs, we communicate with our entire body. Paralinguistic phenomena occur at the same time as spoken language and, together, produce a total system of communication. The study of paralinguistic behavior is part of the study of conversation, so the conversational use of spoken language cannot be properly understood without paralinguistic elements.

Tone of voice

Following the aforementioned example, in arguments between equals in Saudi Arabia, men reach a decibel level that would be considered aggressive, objectionable, and hateful in the United States. The voice connotes strength and sincerity among Arabs, while a soft tone implies weakness and cunning. This can lead to misunderstandings in personal and business discussions, since what one may interpret as aggression, for the other would be assertiveness.

Vocal and non-vocal phenomena

The more technical discussion of what is loosely described as pitch of voice involves recognizing a whole set of variations in the characteristics of voice dynamics: loudness, timing, pitch fluctuation, continuity, and so on. Anyone can observe that a speaker will tend to speak in an unusually high pitch when he is excited or angry. In certain situations, this can also occur when the speaker is simply feigning anger and thus, for whatever purpose, deliberately communicating false information.

Among the more obvious non-vocal phenomena that can be classified as paralinguistic and that have a modulating function, as well as a punctual one, is the nod (in certain cultures), which may have an accompanying utterance indicating assent or agreement. A general point that has been continually stressed in the literature is that both vocal and non-vocal phenomena are largely learned rather than instinctual and differ from language to language (or, perhaps I should say, from culture to culture). .

Paralinguistic cues and sarcasm

In 2002, Dr. Rankin, a neuropsychologist and professor at the Center for Memory and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco, used an innovative test called the Social Inference Awareness Test, or Tasit. This test incorporates videotaped examples of exchanges in which a person’s words seem simple enough on paper, but are presented in a sarcastic style so ludicrously obvious to healthy brains that it’s straight out of a sitcom.

“I was testing people’s ability to detect sarcasm based entirely on paralinguistic cues, the form of expression,” Dr. Rankin said.

To their surprise, MRI scans revealed that the part of the brain missing among those who did not perceive sarcasm was not in the left hemisphere of the brain, which specializes in language and social interactions, but in a part of the right hemisphere. ; this section of the brain was previously identified as important only for detecting contextual background changes in visual tests.

References                                 

• Maqueo, A. (2006). Language, learning and teaching: the communicative approach: from theory to practice . Available at: https://books.google.co.ve/books?id=gYndQlD-E9YC&dq
• Poyatos, F. (1994). Nonverbal Communication: Culture, Language, and Conversation . Available at: https://books.google.co.ve/books?id=t_dlBNQ63A0C&dq