Prosodic features of polite speech: Evidence from Korean interactional data

Lucien Brown, Grace Eunhae Oh and Kaori Idemaru
Monash University | Konkuk University | University of Oregon

This paper uses interactional data to investigate the acoustic characteristics of polite or deferential speech in Korean. We asked fourteen Korean speakers to perform two tasks with two different interlocutors: a status superior and a friend. Consistent with previous studies of non-interactional data, deferential speech has lower pitch and shimmer, and quieter final syllables. However, divergent from previous studies, deferential speech featured higher jitter (in some locations), higher shimmer and higher H1-H2 (on one task). Through analysis of different locations in prosodic structure, we found that females used more pitch variation on final syllables in deferential speech. We argue that these mixed results show the importance of context in signalling vocal politeness, and also complexities of using interactional data. The findings advance the study of multimodal politeness beyond the analysis of experimental data.

Publication history

Date received: 19 January 2023

Date accepted: 11 December 2023

Published online: 6 May 2024

Table of contents

Speakers can alter the intended im/politeness of their utterances by changing the prosodic delivery. A polite farewell such as “goodbye” can become a rude farewell when delivered with higher pitch, increased tempo and tensed articulation (Culpeper 2005). Face-threatening utterances can be interpreted as mock impoliteness (rather than genuine impoliteness) if accompanied by certain prosodic patterns and/or by bodily visual practices such as smiling or shaking the head (McKinnon and Prieto 2014). Im/politeness is a multimodal phenomenon communicated via various acoustic and visual channels (see L. Brown and Prieto 2017; L. Brown, Hübscher and Jucker 2023).

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