Expressing the Opposite: Acoustic Cues of Thai Verbal Irony

Expressing the Opposite: Acoustic Cues of Thai Verbal Irony Nimit Kumwapee Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University nimit.kumwapee@gmail.com Sujinat Jitwiriyanont Department of Linguistics and Southeast Asian Linguistics Research Unit, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University sujinat.j@chula.ac.th Abstract The present study examined the acoustic cues of sarcasm in Thai. Four Thai speakers par- ticipated in two reading tasks: neutrality and sarcasm reading. Speech rate, F0 mean, F0 range, amplitude mean, amplitude range, F0 slope, and F0 intercept were measured and analyzed. The results indicated that sarcasm was produced at a faster speech rate and with a higher F0 mean, a wider F0 range, and a higher amplitude mean. Amplitude range re- ported no statistical significance. F0 slope alone was an insignificant cue, but F0 slope to- gether with F0 intercept could distinguish be- tween sarcasm and neutrality. Regarding gen- der differences, male speakers decreased their speech rate and increased their F0 mean while female speakers increased their F0 range when expressing sarcasm. Also, both male and fe- male speakers increased their amplitude mean when producing sarcasm. 1 Introduction Verbal irony is a linguistic device utilized to convey an opposite meaning from the literal meaning em- bedded in its linguistic form (Searle, 1991). To illus- trate, the utterance “Your cooking is the best.” means that the person to whom the utterance is addressed is literally the best cook while can also suggest that the person is the worst cook if the speaker intends to say otherwise. Additionally, irony is regarded as flout- ing the Maxim of Quality (Grice, 1989). In other words, the speaker of the utterance above was ly- ing to the addressee that they are good at cooking. Sperber and Wilson (1981) propose another frame- work that irony is an echoic expression of thoughts that conveys a dissenting attitude such as skepticism, mockery, or contempt. Thus, the speaker of the utterance above could be mocking the person they address. Despite having more definitions than pre- sented here, irony can be viewed as a form of com- munication expressing a different/opposite facet of meaning with different attitudes. Different meanings within a statement can be ex- pressed via different methods employed whether it be different word choice, syntactic structure or means of communication. That is, some words con- vey a more formal meaning than another and some structures emphasize on different pieces of infor- mation. Different tones of voice are used to sig- nify different meanings apart from the original state- ment. During communication, meaning is not just encoded in linguistic forms. It is both linguistic and non-linguistic cues that play a role in an effec- tive communication among interlocutors. Linguistic cues are encoded within sounds, words, and struc- tures as previously explained. Non-linguistic cues, on the other hand, involve gestures, facial expres- sions, and the situations/contexts in which the com- munication takes place. Hellbernd and Sammler (2016) found that extralinguistic cues such as speech prosody also function in conveying intentions. They found that prosodic cues such as F0 rise, mean …

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