台灣地區中文禮貌語氣聲學訊號研究

An Acoustic Study on the Tone of Voice in the Politeness Talks in Taiwan Mandarin

林欣怡(Hsin-Yi Lin)

指導教授 ： 謝國平

國立臺灣師範大學/文學院/英語學系/碩士(2006年)

摘要

本研究旨在探討對話者的關係對於他們對話語氣的影響。我們研究了三個社會關係因素：說話者的性別〈男生或女生〉、聽者的性別〈男生或女生〉，還有對話者彼此熟悉的程度〈非常熟—好朋友 或 完全不熟—陌生人〉。我們想要瞭解的問題是，說話者在面對不同的聽話者時，是如何調整自己的語氣，而這些語氣又是如何地反應在聲學訊號上。在收集語料方面，我們利用讓受試者配對玩字卡遊戲的方式，來引發他們對話並且錄音。接著我們檢視目標聲學訊號的表現，檢視的訊號是焦點字上的：句尾延長、音頻範圍、音頻高度，還有母音空間。分析結果顯示，對話者之間的關係的確會影響他們對話時的語氣，不過在同一種語氣裡的不同的語音訊號，似乎擔負不同的功能。女性的說話者，面對朋友時會有較長的句尾延長，面對男性對話者時會有較低的音頻。男性的說話者所做的調整，則大部分都是針對異性，他們面對女性時會有較長的句尾延長和較高的音頻。而男女說話者在面對男性陌生人的時候，都會有比較大的母音空間。
所得到的結果顯示，當對話者兩人之間的關係較遠時，對話語氣未必比較正式〈較短的句尾延長，較高的音頻高度、較窄音頻範圍和較大的母音空間〉，反而是有相互配合的情況，像是面對女性聽話者時音頻較高，而面對男性時則較低。

關鍵字

禮貌理論 ； 語氣 ； 社會關係 ； 熟悉度 ； 性別 ； 聲學訊號

並列摘要

The present study intends to investigate the influence of interlocutors’ social relationships on their tones of voice when they converse. Three social factors were involved for testing: the gender of the speaker (male or female), and the gender of the interlocutors (males or females), the degree of familiarity between the interlocutors (close friend or stranger). The questions we wanted to ask were: how speakers adjust their tones when they speak to listeners of different familiarity and gender; and how these tones of speech are practiced in the prosodic cues of their speeches. Speech for analysis was collected by having pairs of talkers playing the Word Card Display Game, and their conversation was recorded. The examined cues were final lengthening, pitch range, pitch register, and vowel space of the designed focused syllables. The results implied that interlocutors’ relationship did have influence on their tone of voice when they converse. However, different prosodic cues within a tone seem to be respondent to different social factor of the relationship. For female speakers, they would lengthen the duration for friends, and lower their pitch for males; for male speakers, their adjustments were mostly done for the listeners of the opposite gender: their durations were longer for females, and pitch higher also for females. As for the vowel space, both male and female would have larger vowel space for male strangers.
Such results reflect that farther social distance between speakers do not necessarily elicit more formal tone of voice (shorter duration, higher pitch register, narrower pitch range, and larger vowel space). Speakers in our study showed that accommodation is also a mechanism at work (ex. lower pitch register for male hearers and higher pitch register for female hearers).

並列關鍵字

Politeness Theory ； Tone of voice ； Social relationship ； Familiarity ； Gender ； Acoustic cue

參考文獻

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