This thesis examines acoustic properties of speech which influence perceptions of personality traits, specifically charisma. The following questions are addressed: How does amplitude variation influence ratings of dominance (i), how does voice quality affect personality trait attribution (ii), and how does allophonic variation affect ratings of charisma (iii). Chapter 2 addresses question (i), finding that certain linguistic levels (increased amplitude in sentence and syllable levels) affected dominance ratings while others (increased amplitude at word level and reduction at syllable level) did not. Increased sentence amplitude increased dominance ratings while increased syllable amplitudes had inverse effects. Additionally, two types of dominance were examined (social and physical dominance) but no statistically significant differences were found between the two. Chapter 3 examines question (ii). All voice qualities investigated (modal, creaky, breathy, nasal, and smiling) were found to be statistically significant. Effect sizes for statistical significance varied for each voice quality. Creaky voice (rated the lowest/ most negative) and smiling voice (rated the highest/most positive) had the strongest effects. Chapter 4 examines question (iii). Experiment 1 (in-person) and Experiment 2 (online) examined the effects of allophonic variation, final consonant devoicing (FCD), and /t/ variation, on ratings of charisma. Experiment 1 found statistically significant rating differences for FCD. Final voiced items were rated higher compared to devoiced ones. For the /t/ variation, only speaker differences were found to be statistically significant. Experiment 2 showed no statistically significant results for FCD, whereas /t/ variation found statistical significance for [t] productions versus the glottal stop, and for flap productions versus the glottal stop. No rating differences were found between [t] and flap. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that some acoustic variations within speech affect personality trait ratings, specifically charisma, while others do not. I discuss reasons for these outcomes and their utilization in various domains, including AI. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This research explores the effects of different aspects of speech on the impressions of the speaker’s personality. It examines three questions: (i) how loudness affects the perception of dominance, (ii) how voice quality influences personality traits, and (iii) how pronunciation variations impact charisma. Chapter 2 (i) found that for sentences, increases in loudness increases perceptions of dominance, while for syllables they reduce them. Chapter 3 (ii) found that each voice quality investigated affects personality trait ratings, but creaky voice was perceived most negatively and smiling voice most positively. Chapter 3 (iii) found that voiced final consonants are rated higher in charisma than devoiced ones for in-person participants, but not for online participants. Regular [t] and flap pronunciations differ from glottal stops but not from each other only for online participants. The findings suggest that certain aspects of speech variation influence personality trait ratings and offer applications to teaching and AI.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luciana dos Santos Cristino.pdf: 1353094 bytes, checksum: b2d7384b589b3b92a00a9607815843dd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-02-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research aims at investigating the occurrence of code-switching in the speech of a late bilingual subject, under sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. Code-switching or code alternation is a communicative strategy used by bilingual speakers in a given social situation. The word bilingual primarily describes someone who is proficient in two languages. This term can, however, also include the many people in the world who have varying degrees of proficiency in three, four or even more languages simultaneously (Wei, 2000) Adopting the parameters of qualitative research, we have done a case study of a 39-year-old Nigerian male bilingual who has lived in Brazil for about 6 years working as an English teacher and is married to a Brazilian. The data was collected by means of five different instruments: audio and video recording of an oral presentation of the subject to a group of students in a Brazilian school in a bilingual context (English/Portuguese), followed by an interview session; a closed individual interview recorded on audio tape, made by means of discrete questions; a written questionnaire in order to collect some personal data about the subject; a visual perception test to detect the preferential language in a free speech context; and an auto-confrontation or reflexive interview. Only the passages where the code-switching phenomenon occured were transcribed and analyzed. Some sentences of this corpus were selected for acoustic analysis and some charts of duration and F0 measures were made to analyze some prosody aspects of the native speaker when speaking the first language and the second language. The final results indicate that: (1) although the subject prefers the mother tongue (English), code-switching occurs in both ways: first language second language / second language first-tongue language; (2) the data analyses suggest that the subject uses different strategies for choosing lexical items, according to the context, the interlocutor, and the place, and that the change of the linguistic code appears most of the time initiated by the OK interjection. The emotional aspect is also worth mentioning: the subject is always worried about the interlocutor and wants to know whether he has made himself clear. The pronunciation of Portuguese words are heavily influenced by his first language; (3) we could observe, from the acoustic analyses , that the intonation curve of the yes/no questions produced in English bears much resemblance to English melodic patterning in that the subject keeps the the intonational aspects of the matrix language; (4) there is considerable alteration in the fonotaxe of some words used by the speaker; (5) the altered lexical item is replaced by words belonging to the same syntactic level / Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar a ocorrência de code-switching na fala de um sujeito bilíngüe tardio (inglês/português), enfocando aspectos prosódicos e de uso lexical, sob uma perspectiva sociolingüística e psicolingüística. Code-switching ou alternância no código lingüístico é uma estratégia comunicativa usada pelo falante bilíngüe de acordo com a situação socialmente estabelecida. A palavra bilíngüe descreve primariamente alguém que seja proficiente em duas línguas. Este termo pode porém, ser usado para incluir muitas pessoas no mundo que tenham diversos níveis de proficiência em duas, três ou mais línguas simultaneamente (Wei, 2000). Seguindo os parâmetros da pesquisa qualitativa, fIzemos um estudo de caso de um bilíngüe do sexo masculino, com 39 anos de idade, nacionalidade Nigeriana, professor de língua inglesa, residente no Brasil há aproximadamente 6 anos e casado com uma brasileira. Os dados foram coletados por meio de cinco instrumentos distintos: gravação em áudio e vídeo de uma apresentação oral do sujeito de pesquisa acima citado a um grupo de alunos de uma escola brasileira em contexto bilíngüe (inglês/português), seguida de sessão de perguntas; uma entrevista fechada individual gravada em áudio, composta por perguntas pontuais; um questionário escrito para levantamento de dados pessoais do sujeito da pesquisa; um teste de percepção visual, para detectarmos a língua preferencialmente escolhida para o discurso livre; e uma auto-confrontação ou entrevista reflexiva. Foram transcritos e analisados apenas os trechos que ocorrem o code-switching. Foram selecionadas algumas sentenças deste corpus para a análise acústica e elaborados alguns gráficos das medidas de duração de F0 para análise dos aspectos prosódicos do falante nativo quando produz na primeira língua e na segunda língua. Os resultados obtidos indicam que: (1) embora o sujeito tenha preferência pela língua materna (inglês), o code-switching ocorre nos dois sentidos: primeira língua segunda língua / segunda língua primeira língua; (2) a análise dos dados trouxe à tona que o sujeito utiliza diferentes estratégias para escolha do léxico, de acordo com o contexto, do interlocutor, do local, e a mudança do código lingüístico aparece na maioria das vezes iniciado com a interjeição Ok . A questão emocional também aparece como um fator: o sujeito sempre se preocupa com o interlocutor, e com a compreensão das mensagens. A pronúncia das palavras do português é fortemente influenciada pela primeira língua do sujeito; (3) com o auxílio da análise acústica pudemos verificar que a curva entoacional de frases interrogativas totais produzidas em português revelam traços prosódicos do inglês, ou seja, o sujeito mantém a língua matriz nos aspectos entoacionais; (4) a fonotaxe sofre alteração em algumas palavras pelo falante utilizada; (5) o léxico alterado é substituído por palavras do mesmo nível sintático