Prosody
The term, prosody, refers to the musical aspects of speech, including
intonation, rhythm, pitch changes and non-linguistic sounds. Conversations are a
mix of real language and non-linguistic sounds and gestures. Much of the
sound-emitting behavior observed in human conversations is old primate behavior.
Chimpanzees could trade places with humans and feel quite at home.
Children at play, for example, interact with a continuous sequence of sounds as
they run, jump, squat, push, pull, and hit. Some of the sounds are single or
double word commands. Brief sentences are uttered, usually shorter that 6
syllables. Shouts, shrieks, laughter and occasional cries or crying complete the
cacophony of play.
The non-linguistic sound content of human interactions is important,
sometimes more important than the linguistic content. Nonlinguistic sound
production establishes and sustains group cohesion and is linked to prosody,
especially the intonation of words. Conversations are often less linguistic and
more prosodic with expressive sounds and gestures contributing much of the
meaning conveyed. Conversation is about group dynamics. A successful
conversation has several qualities.
Conversations may resemble operas with solos, duets and choruses. When people
converse together they follow an implicit script that consists of innate
sound-making abilities and specific content they have practiced as part of their
social learning. The decoding of prosody appears to be a specific brain
function. Grandjean et al reported two functional magnetic resonance imaging
experiments showing enhanced responses in the superior temporal sulcus for angry
prosody.
They stated: “This emotional enhancement was voice specific, unrelated to
isolated acoustic amplitude or frequency and distinct from any concomitant
task-related attention modulation. Attention and emotion seem to have separate
effects on stimulus processing, reflecting a fundamental principle of human
brain organization shared by voice and face perception.”
I overheard a teenage male talking to friends in a coffee shop. His speech
was rapid, rather loud and from a distance you might surmise that he had a lot
to say. When I sat closer and listened to his monologue, I was fascinated by the
lack of meaningful content. His speech was more of rap session with
frequent cadence words and exclamations. He gestured strenuously as he said:”
“right, you know what I mean, yah… I said I was going, right? And, like, he said
stay longer, man -right? Like, no...”He used the “f” word quite
often. The specific linguistic content of his monologue of over 10 minutes in
duration could be written in a few sentences, but the nonlinguistic content--
the prosody, swearing, laughter, grunts and gestures contributed to the social
value of his effort exists before and outside of semantics. His audience seemed
attentive and followed his performance with a chorus of exclamations, grunts,
laughter and gestures. I thought I had time traveled to some remote African
savannah 200,000 years ago.
In another café conversation, three women and a man in their fifties behaved
as if they were performing an opera. Their speech had musical qualities with
tonal variations, rhythm and overall a sense of composition. When I sat closer,
I learned that they were gossiping about church affairs. The man with a loud
voice repeated the phrase” in Gods’ Kingdom” in a deep baritone voice. One of
the sopranos kept referring to the “Lord’s Work.” The content of the
conversation turned out to be disappointing gossip about another man who was not
doing the Lord’s work with as much insight and skill as the local group. One
woman exclaimed in a high pitched recitative that she was tired of so and so’s
“bullshit” and claimed that he had been preaching the gospel in a false and
misleading manner for 20 years. The baritone replied repeatedly, “in God’s
Kingdom” and the soprano, “The Lord’s Work”.
