Purpose
To characterize TV news reports of serious, neutral and relaxed style of perceptual form and identify acoustically their prosodic variation.
Methods
In the first phase the authors selected out of vision scenes from open channels sites, subsequently divided into three style groups: serious, neutral and relaxed. The final sample was defined by the trial of 20 subjects lay people who chose the top five out of vision scenes for each style. In the second phase three speech therapists characterized the sample through perceptual evaluation, and the third phase was carried out acoustic analysis of the fundamental frequency parameters, intensity and duration.
Results
In three styles the sample is characterized by a neutral voice quality with balanced melodic curve, using emphases the importance of the word in the phrase, expressive pauses and speech rate average. In the acoustic analysis, serious style showed lower minimum frequency, intensity variation and duration of the stressed syllable. The neutral style obtained the lower maximum frequency, variation in semitone and amount of pauses per minute, and larger intensity variation and speech rate. The relaxed style obtained the lower speech rate and the highest maximum frequency, minimal variation in semitones, number of breaks per minute and duration of the stressed syllable. Was statistical difference in the rate of speech comparing the relaxed and serious, relaxed and neutral styles.
Conclusion
The perceptual evaluation results were similar in all styles. The acoustic analysis reveals that the speech rate as the parameter that differentiates the serious and neutral styles of the relaxed.
Speech; language and hearing sciences; Voice; Speech acoustics; Communication; Journalism